The Happytime Murders (2018)

“I never knocked a guy out with his own balls before..."

Well then. I doubt, somehow, that that puppet sex scene will ever be topped. Team America has nothing on this. It's not all about puppet spunk going everywhere, though; this film is a work of bloody genius and you'd have to be proper po-faced not to enjoy it.

The concept is, of course, quite mad; in an LA where puppets exist as second class citizens, the cast of an '80 puppet television show are being murdered one by one. Meanwhile a puppet PI who is basically Philip Marlowe made of felt and voiced (literally) by the Swedish Chef, complete with first person narration, deals with the fallout from, er, falling out with his delightfully foul-mouthed former police partner Connie Edwards, the splendid Melissa McCartney.

It's even better than that, though; the script is hilarious, putting these Sesame Street style puppets in a world with lots of sex, swearing and, er, sugar. There's a rather decent whodunit going on but, even better than that, the firm is full of filthy dialogue. Delightfully filthy dialogue. And the not-particularly-famous cast plays it all perfectly.

If I were to pick holes, perhaps the ending is a little neat- yes, the baddie is defeated but it's not entirely clear how Phil comes to be exonerated. But I think it would be churlish to dwell on that too much; this film is hilarious, and didn't deserve to flop the way it did. Here's hoping for a deservedly long and glorious afterlife as a cult hit.