The Happytime Murders (2018)

This movie fucking sucks. I might as well just put that on the table at the top here. I know, right? A movie that took 10 years to get out of development hell and is about a puppet police detective is bad? Stop the presses.

Director: Brian Henson

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Bill Barretta

IMDb

Co-written with Tony.

SPOILERS ahead!!!

It's just so, so bad. It's like a distillation of a bunch of horrible jokes you'd hear at a bad comedy open mic vomited onto the screen with a bunch of puppets saying them. It's the kind of humor you'd hear from a 14 year old just trying to be edgy by making a bunch of raunchy jokes with no context or talent to do so. It's every internet troll going 'oh, you don't think these jokes are funny? Stop being so offended, snowflake!'

Like, even from the start, you get a bunch of stupid perverted voice-overs in the main character, Phil's, head as he's investigating this case from a hot woman puppet who says she's being blackmailed. In the first five minutes, she's already promising Phil she'll have sex with him if he solves her case. Calm down, movie, god; we barely have characters defined yet. And they don't waste time getting to a puppet sex shop, either, which only leads to more embarrassingly bad jokes. Get it? It's puppets, but they're talking about super raunchy things! It's funny because puppets are usually for kids! Do you get it yet?

I guess Melissa McCarthy is playing this other detective who has bad blood with Phil. You can tell because they argue and fight like idiot children every time they're on screen, bringing the plot to a screeching halt several times, spitting terrible roast jokes and insults at each other. Some of the backstory is shoved obnoxiously in your face... apparently, years and years ago, Phil was the first and only puppet cop and he was unable to kill this guy who had captured McCarthy. Then everyone thought he did it on purpose because 'puppets don't shoot puppets.' And then puppets were forever banned, by law, from becoming cops anymore.

All of this shit just shows how bad the writers were at crafting a plot. Really, none of it makes sense. What parallels are there to real life at all? Why would they ban all puppets from being cops or think he did it on purpose? It's never really clarified, instead just made out to be some kind of hamfisted racism allegory, because people all hate puppets in this world for some undefined reason. I guess I can see why they didn't care about plot; I mean a bunch of bad puppet sex jokes probably took a long time for them to come up with. They were probably too tired to make a plot.

The plot, if you can call it that, is that someone is killing off the cast of this old show called the Happytime Gang. Though the movie barely focuses on that. Instead we get a super long scene in this biker bar where McCarthy does puppet coke and fires a gun off a few times, then gets mad at some guy for using the word 'bitches' and beating the shit out of him for that. It's cute that this movie is seriously trying to shoehorn in a feminist message when everything else about it is trashy and low-brow as fuck. It's like if someone took a giant steaming shit on your car window but then lectured you about how you shouldn't say 'cunt' because it's rude.

Oh, and there's a hacky romance scene between Phil and his old girlfriend played by Elizabeth Banks where they talk about what could've been. Every fucking thing in this movie is playing the most rancid, tired detective movie cliches straight, without even trying to be satire. It's pretty amazing that I can't even tell if this movie is even a little bit self-aware. It seems to think it qualifies as 'satire' since they're trying to make jokes in the movie, but how does that make sense? Just having eggs and flour separately doesn't mean you've made a fucking cake.

Perhaps the real low point, though it's hard to choose, is the sex scene between Phil and the lady he accepted the case from, in which there's an extended scene of Phil ejaculating Silly String all over the place for far, far too long... I think Silly String should really reconsider how their product is used in media from now on.

I just can't believe any functioning adult wanted to put this in a movie. There are a bunch of people watching, too, including Phil's secretary Bubbles and a bunch of cops, and none of them seem to make much of a big deal out of it. Bubbles even grabs a bunch of cleaning supplies like this happens all the time. That's really why so much of this is such bad comedy – why would she stay around after the first time her boss jizzed all over his own office and made her clean it up? Just because it's a comedy doesn't mean you can just stop making any logical sense. Part of good comedy is people's reactions to bizarre or over the top situations. Here, this gross, weird nonsense is just treated like an every day thing.

The rest of the movie doesn't improve at all. More bad sex puppet jokes, and they throw in some physical gags about McCarthy's appearance for good measure, which is weird since I thought the movie was trying to be all feminist or whatever. But because it's comedy, it apparently doesn't have to make sense, so I guess I'm the jackass here.

Oh, and did you want to see a children's puppet portrayed as a strung out dying drug addict in a grimy, dark hellhole? You're in luck. The movie provides this soul-killing image with the exact amount of tact you've come to expect, which is none. Seriously, what reason would anyone have to want to see that image?

I guess they find out the real killer was that hot puppet lady from the very beginning, because the bullet Phil fired while trying to kill the guy who'd captured McCarthy accidentally killed her father all those years ago. It's a real stretch. But they make it work by not trying to give this character a personality in any way. Phew! That solves that problem!

The movie ends, finally and mercifully, with Phil asking out his secretary Bubbles, despite there being no romantic connection between the two at all for the entire movie. Does she even want to go out with him after she's had to literally clean up his jizz at the office multiple times? I guess it's consistent in that it's totally unfunny garbage just like literally every single other frame of the movie.

The jokes were bad, the story was bad, I really didn't see even one thing to like here. It's been a while since that happened. The humor in this is solely based on stupid juvenile shock value shit that is bad even by that standard. There's basically one joke idea: puppets swearing and talking about dirty things = funny. And it can't even do that remotely well. Everything in this is overly simplistic low-brow crap and doesn't try to use its creativity for anything but the easiest, lamest jokes possible.

It's actually kind of amazing how truly worthless this movie is, and I really doubt there will be anything worse this year. But if you like terrible jokes and no plot or character, go nuts with The Happytime Murders!

Image copyright of its original owners, we don't own this.

Dead Silence (2007)

Man, if I keep on reviewing these James Wan movies, people are going to start thinking I have some vendetta against James Wan!

...what? I have no clever retort to that. It was just an observation.

Director: The Great Visionary James Wan

Starring: Wooden caricatures of human beings, and also puppets

IMDb

So...Dead Silence. This piece of shit was one of the first in a long painful line of supernatural ghost-vengeance-small town-nice-house-porn flicks that have been coming out like the Octo-Mom’s kids ever since.

A quick glance at the Wikipedia page reveals, for one, that this movie’s script was heavily doctored after its initial draft by SAW writer Leigh Whannel, who wasn’t happy about it at all. Which is understandable given the quality of this movie, but baffling when you find out Whannel also wrote Insidious: Chapter 2 just last year - didn’t learn THAT much, huh? And two, one of the working titles was apparently “Sshhh…”. That...doesn’t even need a comment.

In the opening credits, we see how puppets are really made: in the dark with seizure-inducing flashing lights so you can’t see what you’re doing, with dark ominous music playing, because that puts you in a mood to make toys for children, doesn’t it?

Puppets are dark, scary monsters made in hellish domains by tortured souls. Rent one for your seven year old's birthday party today. Boy, Jim Henson studios got dark in its later years.

Once upon a time there was a boring couple who were unrealistically attractive. The guy, Jamie, loved fixing sinks and the girl flirts by saying that him dialing for take-out for dinner is attractive to her. Lovely! I almost, kinda, sorta believed that you had once been in a room a long time ago with two people in a relationship.

"The smell of hands working under a sink gets me hot! Dialing a phone to order bad Chinese food gets me even hotter!" ... "Hey, is this realistic dialogue yet? No? Well, fuck it; I don't like putting effort into things."

But that doesn’t last long, as apparently Jamie gets a puppet in the mail. I’d say how weird that is, but I’m following the characters’ lead. Because they don’t find it weird at all. They don’t even ask any questions!

"Where did that puppet come from?"
"Who cares? Let's play with it!"

I guess mysterious packages in the middle of the night are just normal for them.

We then see what a catch Lisa is as she talks to the dummy while she’s alone with it and sets it up to “scare” Jamie when he gets back. Seeing as that isn’t something any functioning human being in the history of the world would do, the doll rightfully kills her:

Jamie returns home and finds this, in a suitably obnoxiously edited flash cut with a loud sound behind it, because nothing can be scary without that. I mean, thank fuck they put in that loud sound and the flashy lights and what not; I never would have known to be scared here otherwise.

Then he gets arrested and questioned by the worst cop in the world, who suspects him of killing Lisa even though he didn’t do it and there was that tiny matter of a DOLL being delivered to him right before the murder happened! But the cop doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t consider it. What he DOES care about is interrogating a guy just for the sake of hearing his own stupid voice. Because that’s...really all you’re getting with this, you fucking idiot. I’ll sum up the conversation:

“Did you kill your wife?”

“No, but there was this weird puppet dropped off in front of my door like an hour before---”

“That had NOTHING to do with it! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE?”

“But I saw a guy with a bloody knife leaving the scene when I got back to the house!”

“Trivia at best! DID YOU KILL YOUR WIFE? I know ya did! Admit it, you guilty bastard!”

“But I get phone calls every night from the murderer and he taunts me that he'll never be caught because the police won't do their jobs right!”

“Oh pshaw, you killed her; just admit it!”

AAAGGGHHH!

Then we see the height of good policework - after you question your “suspect” for no reason very harshly, just let him leave town and take the fucking dummy with him. Oh yeah. Why does he take that dummy? Your guess is as good as mine. I guess he just wanted to remind himself of Angel Season 5 while on the road.

He goes to the town we see in all of these movies: the sorta small town with a Victorian mansion in the middle of it, and also with a population of only attractive, slender white people. The houses we see are always squeaky clean with nothing out of place and look like millionaires reside there. Because nothing says horror you can relate to like it’s happening to you, like a bunch of rich GQ cover models living in mansions even The Big Lebowski would call extravagant.

If a black person appeared in any James Wan movie, the whole universe would probably implode.

We get some very bland attempts at drama when Jamie interacts with his father, who apparently he didn’t used to get along with but now the father has changed and wants to reconcile I guess - whoop-de-doo, do you want a fucking medal? Also apparently the father has had multiple ex-wives and celebrates that fact by painting them out of portraits when they die, or some shit like that.

All of this is really just window dressing to the main point that this movie has no fucking idea what it’s doing. Who cares about any of this drama? How does it make us relate to the characters or story any more? That’s really the crux of horror, you know - relating to the characters so we’re scared with them when they get in danger. This movie, like so many before and after it, just wanted an excuse to show pretty looking mansions and attractive people.

There’s no spontaneity to any of this, no mess in the houses, no flaws in the characters’ appearances, speech or personalities - these things, while small, would have made the film a tad bit better, as at least THEN we could have gotten the sense we were watching real people, and maybe then we could have at least been a little more invested in this shitty story. As is, it’s more like watching a bunch of dolls playing in a dollhouse.

So Jamie leaves and goes to some motel where I really am just hoping Norman Bates will pop out and stab him to death. But that doesn’t happen. Instead we get another appearance by Detective Gumshoe McCrimeSolver, who has a brilliant solution - focus in on the dummy NOW. Yeah, before it just seemed like a silly idea, but NOW it’s genius! Detective work is fun when you can just make things up as you go with no logic or reason!

We also get the true height of detective skills when we see Gumshoe here talk to Jamie with the dummy just to be super funny and shit:

"For my next trick, I'll make the rest of this movie seem tolerable by comparison when I come on screen."

What the shit is this, the stand-up comedy hour with the detective? Get the fuck out. We really paid tax dollars for this? Is this really the best the police force could do? Well, I suppose it isn’t actually - it’s just that they probably put all their competent guys on cases more important than the fucking dummy murder case. That makes more sense.

After that we get an exposition scene where Jamie runs into the town crazy lady, and of course her husband is kind enough to sit Jamie down and tell him everything going on in a neat and orderly fashion, because the movie had no idea how to get all of this vital fuckin’ information out to us otherwise…

"Now, let's talk about something so boring the audience will fall asleeeeeepppppppp

So get this - apparently a long time ago, Cruelle DeVille’s even creepier and meaner cousin went on stage all the time in this town and did puppet shows. It apparently was fine and dandy until some snot-nosed kid made fun of her because her lips were moving.

It's like a Disney game; return 101 puppets to Cruelle DeVille's less successful cousin.

Then she killed him and the town pulled a Freddy Krueger and killed her in retaliation. Apparently her will involved them turning her into a puppet after she died, which I’m sure was a bucketload of fun for the embalmers and the morticians:

So do wood carvers in this world ask for their body to be turned into a wood statue after they die? At what point do these after-death wishes become too ridiculous?

And so now she’s a vengeful ghost haunting the town for no reason. Or maybe there is one. But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to listen to the bland writing that makes this thing up. Apparently she also had a bunch of dolls that she made that got buried because, I guess, the town thought they were haunted or something. Whatever.

The movie after this...really doesn’t have any structure to it, and it just meanders around like a drunk at Oktoberfest. There’s way, way too much exposition, with a whole other part where we get lots of backstory about the town and why Jamie specifically is being targeted - I dunno; forgive me for being vague, but do you really even care? It took me Herculean strength to type even this little paragraph - c’mon, I’m trying to make these reviews more exciting, and this movie is NOT helping.

I’m just amazed at the great use our taxpayers’ money is going to with this cop - he spends time digging up ALL THE PUPPET GRAVES to prove the point that, I dunno, something is going on I guess. Are you shitting me? Digging up little puppet graves is official police procedure now? 

"Phew, I didn't prove anything by doing this, but I sure did get a good workout!"

Eventually they make their ways to the set of Lord of the Rings for the final battle:

There, the ghost speaks through a puppet and says the reason Lisa died in the beginning was because she was pregnant. You know, the twist from Se7en doesn’t work when it’s a dumb looking clown puppet saying it.

Then we see the true way to kill ghosts - blow the fuck out of them with a rifle. Genius!

Call of Duty: Retarded Edition

The detective guy finally dies, which I think almost redeems the movie altogether - almost.

Then Jamie goes back home and has a flash-cut revelation when he realizes his father wasn’t his father at all, but instead a puppet the whole time, and his father’s new wife was actually the ghost in disguise!

This is why we can't have nice things.

This whole movie was just awful. Wan’s cliches are already in full force here like a back-full of angry warts. The characters are non-entities, the setting is boring, there are no effective scares and the story is mostly just really, really boring exposition. All in all, shit movie, shit director, nothing good about it and if you’re outdone in quality by an R.L. Stine book, you need to quit making movies.

Oh you bet I went there. At least the Stine books were awesome for twelve year olds. James Wan movies aren't awesome to anyone.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.