THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS (2018)

It's not just that son of Jim Henson Brian Henson crapped on his father's MUPPET SHOW legacy by making a crude comedy where crude puppets are actually part of the human world... It's the fact that making puppets into quasi-people deletes the magic of what puppets are in the first place, and what they aren't are cartoons, hence the WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT  theme with fictional beings existing with real ones and making no sense in THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS, where puppetry looks more CGI within a modern-time Noir Narrating-Gumshoe has a crass private eye puppet going from scene to scene swearing (from Jesus's name to...you name it) or beating people up, partnered reluctantly with former partner/human cop Melissa McCarthy, who also swears and fights and... While the stout actress has gotten the most blame for this train-wreck, and her casting does take away from what Henson obviously intended to be a different kind of puppet movie instead of a the same kind of different kind of McCarthy movie (it's basically THE HEAT), the script's to blame here: each scene is overlong and ponderous while the body count plot... puppets from a former popular TV series are being picked off one-by-one... runs out of steam, and long before murder one Rating: *