What do you get when you combine Sesame Street with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Heat, and Porky‘s? Based on the (definitely NSFW) first trailer for The Happytime Murders you get the silliest, raunchiest, most disturbing puppet movie ever. One that could still use a lesson on not relying on tired and offensive jokes about sexuality.
In the film’s first trailer, a pair of detectives played by Melissa McCarthy and a puppet “are forced to work together again to solve the brutal murders of the former cast of a beloved classic puppet television show [in] the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles where puppets and humans coexist.” Be warned, do not watch this trailer around your kids… or even other adults. This might be the spiritual successor to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but it is not a family friendly movie.
But even if you’re not bothered by a slew of increasingly dirty gags, the trailer’s most disappointing element is its use of homosexuality as a punchline. The entire premise of the scene with the two sex workers on the street revolves around the suggestion that two women having sex is hilarious. It’s an outdated and unfunny bit, and shouldn’t be given a pass just because it’s being delivered by puppets.
Hopefully that’s an outlier and not an indication of the overall tone and humor of the movie, because we expect better from puppets. Even the vulgar ones.
The Happytime Murders, also starring Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale, and Elizabeth Banks, comes to theaters on August 17.
What did you think of this trailer—good or bad? Tell us in the comments below.
Featured Image: STX Entertainment
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