Film Review: The Happytime Murders

Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime

Cert: 15 cert

Director: Brian Henson

Screenwriter: (screenplay by) Todd Berger, (story by) Todd Berger, Dee Austin, Robertson

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, Joel McHale, Cynthy Wu, Michael McDonald, Mitch Silpa, Hemky Madera, Benjamin Cole Royer, Brekkan Spens, Ryan Tran, Fortune Feimster, Brian Palermo, John Damon Jones

Running time: 1h 31min

Parents advised reading before viewing the film as some scene may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.

Sex & Nudity:

• Phil Phillips is having sex with a doll clad in a gi, and then he ejaculates all over the room(the semen is actually silly string for comic effect).
• The premise of the film involves the murder of puppets - who are killed using a variety of weapons. Their deaths are bloodless because they are puppets, and viewers see cotton instead of blood.
• A lengthy, exceedingly graphic scene involving two puppets is full of explicit movements, sounds and puppet bodily "fluids."
• Elsewhere, we see a female puppet's anatomy when it becomes clear she's not wearing underwear.
• A still photo of the same puppet pictures her in a lewd, compromising position with a female human-a human that we later learn she's married to.
• Ezra and Cara are, apparently, a long-standing romantic couple despite also being first cousins.
• Phil and Connie meet their children: One has three eyes, the other just one; and they both communicate in chicken squawks.
• We see lots of puppets kiss.
• A human exotic dancer works on stage in tight shorts and a revealing top.
• Puppet prostitutes try to interest Connie in what they have to offer.
• When Connie tells them that she's a woman, they pause for a beat and then tell her that that's just fine with them
• Another male puppet offers to perform oral sex on Connie, also believing that she's a man.
• A puppet lounge in a hot tub with a human conquest, describing the colour of his pubic hair.
• Connie mistakenly grabs Phil's crotch.
• We hear several references and double entendres related to various bits of human and puppet anatomy.
• In the credits, we see pornographic puppet DVD cases that reference various sex acts and fetishes, including homosexual sex.

Violence & Gore:

• Puppets die in many terrible ways (at least, if you're a puppet).
• Several have their heads literally blown off, leaving corpses with fluff coming out of the necks. (Two other puppets get shot in the head, though without quite so much stuffing carnage.)
• Others are shot repeatedly in the torso, killing them.
• One puppet is found washed up on a beach, apparently drowned. (Police officers tell everyone to avert their eyes as they go about wringing the puppet corpse out.)
• Phil and Connie find the decapitated heads of two puppets in bed together.
• Perhaps the most gruesome (?) act of puppet carnage we see involves a puppet being pulled apart by a few smallish dogs like a chew toy.
• Stuffing and puppet parts lie everywhere in the aftermath.
• Humans don't get off scot-free, either. One gets into a car shortly before it explodes; we then see a human figure burning inside.
• Another man is knocked out by his own decorative desk orbs.
• Several other people are incapacitated during a fight involving an unattached steering wheel.
• Connie fights and wrestles with several puppets, biting one in the privates as they thrash around in a hot tub. She threatens one with a gun, forcing her adversary to treat the puppet women he relates to with more respect.
• Phil pummels a few human ne'er-do-wells, smashing their legs repeatedly with a crowbar, hitting and kicking them dozens of times in the crotch and, finally, jumping on their kneecaps.
• Some neighbourhood kids rip the eye off a puppet. Phil hits one of the kids in the face and forces him to give the eye back.
• Phil gets roughed up in prison-repeatedly being hit in the stomach by human prisoners. But given the puppet's lack of bones, Phil says that his adversaries are essentially just "fluffing a pillow."
• Connie folds Phil into a cooler. A puppet is nearly sucked into a jet engine. Two humans are almost incinerated in a booby-trapped house. At least one person is rendered unconscious with chloroform.
• There's talk of ripping apart puppets and turning them into jackets. Connie shoots her car stereo several times.
• When Connie and Phil are still partners, Connie is shot in the gut by a puppet villain, necessitating an emergency trip to a puppet hospital where she receives a puppet liver transplant. (We see Connie's hands covered in blood, and she's apparently unconscious when wheeled into the hospital.)

Profanity: 

• Words like Fuck and shit are used
• Nearly 100 f-words and at least 35 s-words.
• We also hear many uses of "a--," "b--ch," "b--tard," "c--k," "d--n," "d--k," "h---," "p---y" and "crap."
• A puppet uses an obscene gesture. God's name is misused at least 20 times, a dozen of those with the word "d--n." Jesus' name is abused another 20 times.

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking:

• Sugar is A Drug to Puppets
• Phil smokes a lot of cigarettes, often blowing that smoke into the faces of the folks he's talking with. (Connie lights a pair of cigarettes and smokes them both simultaneously to annoy Phil.)
• He keeps a bottle of whiskey in his desk drawer and pours himself a stiff one. Other puppets smoke too, and they hold or have drinks near them at bars and parties. Larry and his human paramour have apparently emptied a pair of margarita glasses.
• Puppets sometimes slip into the terrible grip of addiction-not drugs, but sugar.
• Connie visits a rundown sugar house where addicts (akin to heroin addicts) live what's left of their lives in a sugar-addled haze; one offers to perform sexual acts in exchange for sugar. (When Connie tastes some sugar on a mirror, she gags; one of the residents then admits that he urinated on the mirror.)
• Connie is a sugar addict herself. When she and Phil find themselves in a gang-like establishment, she's forced to prove that she has a puppet liver by snorting a great deal of purple sugar through a liquorice whip: She loves the stuff and consumes a great deal of it, acting incredibly impaired afterwards.
• Phil goes to Connie's apartment and tragically finds the evidence of sugar addiction everywhere, including a refrigerator filled with pancake syrup. (He somberly throws it all in the trash.)

Frightening/Intense Scenes: 

• Non - this film is Not for Kids 

Story: A murder mystery set in a world where humans and puppets co-exist, but puppets are viewed as second-class citizens. When the puppet cast of a '90s children's TV show begins to get murdered one by one, a former cop, who has since become a private eye, takes on the case.

Likes: First of all do not take your kids to watch this film, yes this film might be based on muppets style but it, not a kids film, this film contents adult humour with content that for kids. Unfortunately, this film might be hard like if you're born after the 90s because you never really grow up with the muppets around the 80s, as a puppet style film mixed with actors.

The film is Unrated as the film does have a few moments you laughing you're heads off, where some joke do kind of fall flat in over areas. From the get-go, you know this film isnt for kids as the first scene content shows, what great about this is when you look at films like the muppets where the content is tone down for younger audience, it kind of a bit of fresh air pushing that content to adult level with some over the top funny moments.

The acting is a surprising solid Special from the Puppet voice overs an the live actor and actress gives an all-around funny film.  Melissa McCarthy actually did pretty well acting with puppets which cant be easy, but show what a good actress she can be doing this. Michael Croner doing the voice of Frank the PI detective was brilliant chemistry with the banter that makes this film worth watching.

If you didn't know already the director of Happy Time Murders is the son of legendary Jim Henson who the creator of the muppets, Labyrinth and Harry and the Henderson film, this is his son Brian Henson that taken on this film, which shows that talent doesn't fall from the tree, he inherited his father vision on pupptery and filmmaking which show in this film.

It kind of does give that feel of the 80s and a noir style with the Detective PI (private investigator) with a lot of sexual humour, which this film like a stated this is not a kids film and apart from some areas not being funny this is a pretty average film.



Dislikes: The only thing I would have changed to make this film funnier was to cast Seth Rogen, not that Melissa isnt a great actress, I just find this type of film is better suited for Seth with his sense of humour I think this would have been a bit funnier. But

Overall: Great sense of adult humour, Non for kids, Great voice work on the puppets.

Rating: 5 of 5 for Entertainment / 7 out of 10 for Concept