Puppet mayhem delivers a happy time
The Happytime Murders (R16, 90mins) Directed by Brian Henson. Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
There are days when I truly believe that Meet The Feebles is still my favourite of all Peter Jackson’s films. Feebles is set among a Muppetesque troupe of performers. But unlike their better known counterparts in the US, these puppets are a dysfunctional, drugaddicted, sex-crazed and deeply misanthropic collection of the washed-up and the plain criminal.
All of which made Feebles a far savvier look behind the scenes of the stage industry than Jim Henson ever dreamed of.
Watching The Happytime Murders, I was wondering whether director Brian Henson (son of Jim) was a Feebles fan, when a scene involving a cow starring in a lowbudget porn video – just as in Feebles – removed any doubt. The Happytime Murders is just that kind of film.
Henson recycles pretty much every hard-boiled detective movie ever made into a yarn about a Los Angeles private eye and the femmefatale who is out to frame him for a series of murders. The victims are the puppet cast of a successful 1980s TV show about to be syndicated globally, with a big payday promised for anyone left alive.
Our hero Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta), was once LAPD, and the first puppet to ever be made detective. But fate and a bad ricochet intervened. Now Phil is taking on missing person cases out of a grimy downtown office with only his loyal secretary Bubbles (Maia Rudolph) for assistance.
Melissa McCarthy is Phil’s ex – human – partner, while Elizabeth Banks shows up as the love-whogot-away, now pole-dancing for rabbits at a sleazy puppets-only bar. (Now there’s a sentence I didn’t imagine I’d be writing.)
The Happytime Murders isa pretty good idea only partly let down by its boilerplate script.
If it had turned up as a series of sketches on Saturday Night Live, it would have been a sensation. But even in a deserted cinema at 10am, this film still made me laugh out loud a few times.
On a Friday night, after a few jars with a like-minded crowd it might just be terrific. And stay for the credits. The making-of clips are some of the film’s best moments.