Starring Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale, Ben Falcone, Leslie David Baker, Michael McDonald

(5-Okay Film)

Promising. Crude. Uneven.

Phil Philips: I never knocked a guy out with his own balls before.

The Happytime Murders is a brash, consistently vulgar romp starring Jim Henson-like puppets. That premise, alone, is going to repel a lot of people. I was interested. The result, however, is only sporadically funny and inspires more head shaking than laughter. Phil Philips is a puppet in a world that doesn’t care one bit for his kind. They’re less than second class citizens. Once a promising cop, he’s now a seedy private detective, but after the bizarre death of his brother, an actor, and other cast members from an old sitcom, “The Happytime Gang,” Phil’s forced to team up with his old partner, Detective Edwards (McCarthy), to catch the killer. Director and puppeteer, Brian Henson, son of the legendary Jim Henson, has proven to be an incredibly creative filmmaker. Even in this film, there are a number of good ideas, but a film like this needs to be as funny as it is vulgar and it’s not. Still, you can appreciate the work of the puppeteers which remains a form of magic even after they reveal the process behind it.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

(996)