“You know I have no bones, right? You’re basically fluffing a pillow here.”

Justin’s rating: I’ll give it this: “No sesame. All street.” is a pretty great tagline for this sort of thing.

Justin’s review: Non-Muppet puppet movies always seem to go in the same direction: away from the wholesome realm of Kermit and Miss Piggy and toward the obscene, crude, and decidedly non-family-friendly. It’s really not that creative to pair something childlike with adult-only content, but it’s all Hollywood and Broadway can seem to do.

So I wish I could report that The Happytime Murders broke with these tropes to take a human-puppet hybrid in an interesting direction. Concept-wise, it does. Alas, thematically, it drags us through the same sewer we’ve seen in Avenue Q and Meet the Feebles.

In a world where living puppets exist as second-class citizens, things are going even worse for our felt friends. Phil (Bill Barretta) was the first puppet cop in L.A. before events set him on a course to be a hard-boiled private eye. Hired by a femme fatale to investigate a blackmail incident, Phil finds himself embroiled in a series of murders targeted at knocking off cast members of an old children’s TV show called The Happytime Gang.

To solve the case, Phil reluctantly teams up with his old police partner Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), even though a tragic incident caused no end of bad blood between them. The pair follow the clues, uncover a shocking twist secret or two, and set some wrongs to right.

It’s no secret that The Happytime Murders absolutely tanked in theaters. The question is if this happened because the concept was too out there, the content too raunchy, or the comedy too lacking. All may be true — and more on that in a minute — but I try to be fair in assessing these fluffy situations.

And I have to admit that the puppets are weirdly believable as “people,” backed by some thought-out world building. Film noir for the setting? Sure, why not. It worked well for that one puppet episode of Angel, so why not here? Phil is a surprisingly nuanced character, aided by great puppetry — as long as he’s not running, which looks goofy as crud — and some nice ad-libbing. He fits the stereotype of a jaded P.I. with a dark past pretty well.

Where the casting really falters is McCarthy who — if I may make a sweeping generalization — has never been good in anything, ever, for the entire history of time. Your taste may vary, but I find her abrasive and not nearly as funny as she clearly thinks she is. She drags this movie down, acting like someone’s crabby mom stormed onto the set and nobody had the guts to tell her to leave.

The story is “fine,” but nothing that exceptional in the genre other than the puppet angle. It’s occasionally clever and sporadically funny, but not consistently so. It’s an odd effort for Brian Hanson and company to go all-in on a mature puppet film, and it really didn’t pay off. I can see how it could’ve, perhaps with less raunch, more jokes, and a better human lead.

Still, this is a pretty unique experience that ended up somewhat better and more watchable than I feared, which does make me suspect that the critics came with their own preconceptions. It’s the kind of movie you see out of curiosity more than anything else. Maybe you’ll regret scratching that itch, maybe not.

Intermission!

• “While it’s not a crime to be warm and fuzzy, it might as well be.”
• Poaching puppets for their feet
• “Looks like this mystery is brought to you by the letter P.”
• When rabbits are scared they drop colored eggs
• It’s Stanley from The Office. And Jeff from Community.
• “It’s their world, we just live in it.”
• “You were the first puppet cop — and the last.”
• “Those two were cousins. They’re married with kids now.”
• “They hate him so much they made a code out of him.”
• She has a puppet liver? How does that work?
• “Women love you?” “They do not, they decline.”
• Puppet bathrooms have low ceilings
• That is one freaky long tongue
• The body building puppet
• “By the way, you sleep with your mouth wide open. Like this.”
• Wringing out the dead puppet
• “Turn it off? It’s like a tampon commercial in here.”
• “Wait for a red light!”
• The end credits showing the puppeteers is probably the best part