YMMV / The Happytime Murders

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Big time. A hard-R involving Muppet-like puppets didn't appeal to many people (Meet the Feebles suffered from this same problem), on top of the fact that the Jim Henson Company, who coproduced the film, has had several not-very-well-received projects come out within the decade^note also, they've had quite a few promising projects that have fallen by the wayside; Happytime was lucky enough to be Saved from Development Hell. The film's main selling point was the novelty of R-rated puppets - except that coming long after Avenue Q, Greg the Bunny, Team America: World Police, and the aforementioned Meet the Feebles, the novelty was gone. It naturally was met with weak reviews and floundered in the box office against Crazy Rich Asians.
• Crossing the Line Twice: The humor of this film mostly seems to hinge on the fact that characters resembling those of Sesame Street or The Muppets are doing adult and raunchy acts. Particularly, the Overly Long Gag of Phil having sex with a client and then ejaculating silly string all over his office.
• Les Yay: Two female prostitutes that Edwards runs into don't seem to mind that she's not a man after she corrects them.
• Nightmare Fuel: Larry's death. The fact that he's a puppet and therefore bloodless doesn't make his screams of terror and pain any easier to hear. It gets worse when the girl he was with tries to help, but comes in too late to pull off the dogs.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Although Sesame Street and The Muppets gave the Jim Henson Company a squeaky-clean public image, they've been dabbling in adult material for a while: Henson fought all his life to do adult-oriented material, with his "Land of Gorch" sketches on Saturday Night Live the closest he was able to get; his son Brian spearheaded the sci-fi series Farscape, which was much darker and raunchier than its contemporaries like Star Trek: Voyager; and their Henson Alternative brand produced various adult puppet shows throughout the late '00's/early '10's (though very few of these ventures achieved success).
  • It's not even the first gritty neo-noir revolving around living puppets and dark secrets on the set of a bright, colorful childrens' show named "(BLANK) Time"—that would be "Smile Time".
• Spiritual Successor:
  • It's been gaining comparisons to Meet the Feebles, another film that gives us a darker look at puppets usually used in children's shows. The difference being that this film was made by the actual creators of The Muppets.
  • People have also compared the movie to Sausage Party, another R-rated film that could be easily mistaken for a kids' movie.
  • It's very similar to Avenue Q, another dark, raunchy comedy that happens to involve muppets.
  • The basic premise of a crime story involving characters from a stylized medium as real people and second-class citizens is similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • An earlier movie called The Fuzz featured a puppet cop tracking down the dealers of a G-Rated Drug (Jelly Beans rather than sugar), partnering with a human cop and dealing with anti-puppet prejudice. It was also of a darker, more adult tone.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The general critical and audience opinion on the movie is that it's a great premise and could have been something really clever if it hadn't spent all of its time on just being as nasty as possible. Rotten Tomatoes spells it out for us:
  Critics consensus: The Happytime Murders wastes its intriguingly transgressive premise on a witless comedy that blindly pushes buttons instead of attempting to tell an entertaining story.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The tagline "No Sesame, All Street" seems to be deliberately dispelling this trope. The creators of Sesame Street were not happy about this and threatened to sue the marketing team. They soon backed off, and one TV spot would reference the lawsuit by saying it’s “from the studio that was sued by Sesame Street”.
  • One of the commercials is in explicit defiance of this trope, wherein the cast comes in and lets the viewers know that, no, this is NOT a kids' movie, in spite of the presence of the Muppet-like characters.

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