THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS
R, 91 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Don’t expect Elmo or Grover or Big Bird around here, these are Muppets for grown-ups. And they’ve truly swung for their fences, and a hard R-Rating, with their first feature film, “The Happytime Murders,” which is a hard-boiled detective neo-noir film starring these fuzzy puppety friends alongside human actors. Unfortunately, some mildly-amusing ideas shouldn’t be full-length feature films and “The Happytime Murders” falls victim to that. Directed by Brian Henson, and written by Todd Berger and Dee Austin Robertson, the entire conceit of “The Happytime Murders” is: Puppets Behaving Badly. It’s just that there’s nothing else to the joke. That’s it. And frankly, that joke’s been done before. The film pushes the levels of decency and taste into the gutter, then pushes it further, and that’s supposed to be funny. Because puppets! — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION
PG, 118 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Westbrook. Starts Friday at Lisbon. After his highly successful feature film “The Incredibles” picked up the Oscar for best animated film in 2004, director/writer Brad Bird (“Iron Giant”) said he would make a sequel once he had the right idea. It’s been 14 years, and Bird finally has hatched an idea that resulted in the follow-up to the tale of the superhero family. hile “Incredibles 2” is a fun family film, the multiple storylines Bird has woven through the production often get tangled. A little more simplicity would have lifted “Incredibles 2” from good to the incredible status of the first film. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency
JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
1/2 PG-13, 128 minutes. Starts Friday at Stonington and Lisbon. The best thing “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” has going for it is director J.A. Bayona, who takes a mediocre script by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow and directs the living daylights out of it. This installment may have merely shallow ideas, but it’s easy to be distracted in the moment by the verve and style “The Orphanage” auteur brings to the beloved dino franchise. It just won’t stick with you the second you leave the theater. The story of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is transitory and transitional. It merely serves to explain just how and why genetically engineered dinosaurs make it from point A to point B, wherein point B serves as the jumping-off point for the inevitable and forthcoming “Jurassic World 3.” — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency