The story features Phil (Bill Barretta), a puppet who works as a private eye some years after leaving the local police department over a controversial shooting. Phil is hired by Sandra (Dorien Davies), a purportedly blackmailed femme fatale puppet. Phil's investigation leads to a porn shop for puppets, where he encounters Mr. Bumblypants (Kevin Clash). While Phil researches records in the back, a hit man arrives and kills the other puppets, including Bumblypants.
Phil's investigation teams him up with former partner, Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), who remains a cop. They uncover a series of hits on the stars of the former "Happytime" television series, which is about to enter a lucrative syndication, with all the revenue going to the surviving star. The hits always occur when Phil is present, making him the chief suspect.
It turns out that the last survivor is Jenny Peterson (Elizabeth Banks), the sole human cast member. She is in cahoots with Sandra, who knocks her out and takes her syndication money with the intent of fleeing the country. Phil confronts Sandra, who pulls a gun on Connie. Phil takes out Sandra, leading to a happy ending where Phil gets his cop job back courtesy of Lt. Banning (Leslie David Baker).
How others will see it. The Happytime Murders was directed by Brian Henson, the son of the late Muppets empire founder Jim Henson. Brian Henson had only one prior feature director credit, Muppet Treasure Island, made more than 20 years before.
The Happytime Murders was a box office flop, and its release was accompanied with a flurry of negative reviews. The movie has only a 24% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com, and received the wrong kind of festival attention, getting assorted nominations for Worst Film, Worst Director, Worst Actress, Worst Screenplay, and my favorite, Actress Most in Need of a New Agent from something called the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
At imdb.com, the movie fares little better. The user ratings average 5.3 out of 10. Older audiences favor it slightly more than the younger set, 5.5 versus 5.1. It is a surprise, then, that most of the "most helpful" user reviews are highly positive, e.g. "a hilarious Dragnet throwback with high caliber puppeteering".
How I felt about it. The producers apparently forgot the lesson of Howard the Duck (1986), a commercial failure with a similar premise that "won" four Razzie Awards. This is a movie with a narrow audience.
But Muppet Treasure Island is probably the best of the theatrical Muppet films, even though The Muppets Take Manhattan gets by far the largest number of television showings. (This is likely due to the cute young brunette waitress in that film). What makes Muppet Treasure Island enjoyable, aside from Tim Curry, is that the jokes are generally funny.
And so it is here. While not everyone is up to watching puppet sex end with voluminous ejaculations of silly string, a select minority will indeed find it hilarious. Melissa McCarthy is almost nobody's favorite comic, but she has the gusto for the role, along with no fear of failure. After all, It's Pat (1994) (which has a 0% rating at Rotten Tomatoes) will always instead be regarded as the worst movie made by a "Saturday Night Live" alumni.
The Happytime Murders works better when you forget it features puppets, and remember that it is a satire of private eye and buddy cop dramas. And if it is hopelessly politically incorrect (the puppet children of puppet incest respectively have one and three eyes) then so much the better.