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.

The Emoji Movie (2017)

"Nobody leaves the phone! Delete them!"

Ok, let me make one thing clear from the outset; this film is pants. Oh, there are some films, such as Sausage Party, which seem at first as though they're going to be puerile and stupid but in fact turn out to be witty and clever. So I gave this film a chance. Don't make the same mistake; this film is half-arsed, boring and just plain bad.

It's hard to see whether the fundamental flaw is the concept or the execution. It's all set inside the phone of a kid called Alex, with emojis competing to be flavour of the month and the hero Gene, a "meh" emoji, gets into trouble for failing to always display a "meh" expression, only to save the day, predictably, for being in touch with the full range of his emotions and all that. Oh, and there's a token love story which, to be fair, has a genuine feminist subtext, and James Bloody Corden as the most annoying sidekick ever. We even get a deeply irritating dance scene purely for the purpose of letting Christina Aguilera do something.

The film is stupid, boring, feels over-long, and will inevitably look incredibly dated in not many years from now. And it gives rise yet again to that age-old question: why does America find James Corden funny?