The Happytime Murders

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Brian Henson.

Cast: Bill Barretta, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, Dorien Davies, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Kevin Clash.

Spot the puppet. The answer may surprise you (it's the guy with the beard).

Firstly, this is not the first time "Muppets" have gone hardcore. That honour goes to Peter Jackon's sickly twisted cult comedy Meet The Feebles. Of course, they weren't actual "Muppets" but it was the next best thing.

While The Happytime Murders is also destined for cult status, it has something Meet The Feebles didn't have - actual Muppet cred, courtesy of director Brian Henson.

Henson, son of the late great Jim, is a longtime Muppeteer, and has directed Kermit and co in such films as A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. Just what his old man would make of this sweary mess of sex-and-violence noir is a question for the ages.

The Happytime Murders focuses on Phil Phillips (Barretta, another Muppet stalwart), who was the first puppet cop in an alternate Los Angeles that imagines humans and puppets living side-by-side. Kicked off the force for an incident that still haunts him, Phil now works as a private investigator.

His latest case is trying to solve the murder of a puppet cast member from an old TV show called The Happytime Gang, which brings him into the firing line of his ex-cop partner Connie Edwards (McCarthy).

The Happytime Murders is fitfully funny, but nowhere near as funny as it should be. Too often it goes for the racy sex joke or a wacky puppet gag, when something actually hilarious would have been a better option. The humour is often yearning to point out that hey, this is a movie for adults starring puppets, as if we hadn't noticed already.

The comedic approach is at odds with what makes the film work, which is when it gets on with being a good movie telling a good story. Phil is a great character, whose flaws and traits make him seem more human than his blue felt would indicate. His relationship with Edwards, despite its histrionics, is interesting too. Unlike the humour, these elements aren't straining self-consciously.

The plot is a semi-decent noir story, and as well as dialling up the laughs, cranking up the noirish elements wouldn't have gone astray. The closest relative to this film is not Meet The Feebles or the marionette mayhem of Team America - it's Robert Zemeckis' toon-noir classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

That film also used its non-human/human interactions to examine prejudice (it's far less subtle in The Happytime Murders) to tell a properly noirish story, while also employing plenty of that film genre's cinematic style. The Happytime Murders would surely have benefited from a touch more Touch Of Evil, or a flutter of The Maltese Falcon, instead of looking like a Sesame Street on the wrong side of the tracks.

The puppetry itself is top notch and innovative, making the most of green screen and CG erasure to make its people-and-puppets world a reality. The cast are trying hard, when the laughs land they are great, the story has its moments, and Phil is a cool character you would happily watch in another hardboiled mystery. It's a shame there isn't more hilarity or noirish style to this ambitious cult-classic-in-waiting.