Movie Breakdown: The Happytime Murders

Pre-Screening Stance:

Melissa McCarthy has generally been more miss than hit recently, so my guess at this point is that The Happytime Murders isn’t going to be any good.  With that being said, I sort of liked McCarthy’s Life Of The Party (from earlier this year), and I’m at least moderately intrigued by this puppet-murder-movie being directed by Jim Henson’s son, Brian.

Post-Screening Ramble:

I saw a tweet from someone that called The Happytime Murders the worst movie of the year.  I don’t think that’s true.  Yes, its best moment is when it ends, but not because its largely forgettable, surprisingly tame ride is over, it’s more that you get to see behind the scenes via what’s essentially a blooper reel.  There’s some magic on display there that isn’t present anywhere else in The Happytime Murders, and it really made me wish that director Brian Henson had figured out a way to inject that energy into the rest of his film.  Instead what you get is is a super swift hour and twenty minutes of movie that’s half cocked, occasionally funny and rarely daring.  In other words, it’s mostly just a boring affair, and not really what I would call “the worst movie of the year.”

There’s no reason you should pay to see The Happytime Murders in theaters.  You should wait until you stumble across it on some streaming service on a very rainy day far in the future.

One Last Thought:

I didn’t know (or remember) that Stanley (Leslie David Baker) from The Office is in this, and I almost clapped when he appeared on the screen.  Unfortunately, he delivers his lines like he’s in Threat Level Midnight, and it’s not good.

One More Last Thought:

Oddly enough, I actually think The Happytime Murders would have worked well as a one-off, ten-episode season on HBO.  They could have done it almost as a parody of True Detective or Sharp Objects, and I believe it would have been hilarious.