The Last Crapshoot: Hollywood's Maniacal Laughs

Truly, humor is subjective.

Even by the previously established indulgently low standards of Will Ferrell and John C. Reily team-ups, the very premise of “Holmes and Watson” is beyond a stretch at absolute best.

I don’t mean to imply that the film would have worked with another release date in its existing state but with the boom of “Sherlock Holmes” adaptations gradually beginning to wane, it just seems like the period of popularity that this mess could have benefited from has long since come and gone.

This of course wouldn’t have improved the movie, which sees Ferrell and Reily portraying the titular literary duo undertaking an effort to expose the criminal behind placing a threat upon the life of Queen Victoria, but it would have at least helped to explain why the project was greenlit.

While I still hold “Talladega Nights” closely to my heart as one of my favorite comedies to ever be released within my lifetime, “Step Brothers” was proof that the comedic pairing of these two, brilliant as the results can be, only really works with some sort of tight supervision in place.

“Holmes and Watson” is the exact kind of bottom of the barrel, loud, low brow, and broad comedy one would come to expect from hearing that the two decided to team up in the absolutely most stereotypical of ensuing results, and not even a passably funny example of that kind of garbage at that.

Not a single opportunity is missed for loud adlibbing, pop culture references, bathroom humor, or unsubtle social commentary delivered in the worst possible capacity but what truly baffles me is how despite being the full blow bore of a disaster that the very premise could promise to be (2 Americans spoofing a British fictional icon, what else could we have asked for?), the movie doesn’t look particularly cheap.

I’m not saying the bank was particularly busted on this flat and bland production but as far as period pieces go, the set design and costuming more or less maintains a strong visual consistency, which could not have been done carelessly.

Why such effort was expounded is most certainly beyond me but I do think it should be acknowledged and admired that somebody involved in this production went beyond the call of duty outside of Reily’s occasional efforts to bring an actual character to life, subsequently snuffed out by Ferrell’s irritating and potentially adlibbed antics.

Failing to be of any actual comedic or cinematic worth, while ultimately being too boring to be a truly entertaining trainwreck, “Holmes and Watson” seems destined to fade into obscurity, unlike the figures it attempts to parody.




In keeping with the theme of bizarrely conceived comedies, the son of Jim Henson brings us an adult buddy cop, noir, sex comedy featuring a washed up has been puppet cop teaming up with Melissa McCarthy to solve a series of puppet murders while battling their own personal demons and prejudices.

Unlike “Holmes and Watson” however, I find myself pleasantly surprised to have gone into “The Happytime Murders” to discover a film that’s not particularly bad.

The film is not quite good mind you but also not fully deserving of its negative reputation.

“The Happytime Murders’” biggest flaw harkens back to my viewing of Netflix’s “Bright” roughly a year ago in that it ultimately fails to live up to the potential of its high concept premise, inherently niche in the audience it was most likely to stick with.

Attempting to use puppets as some sort of metaphor for issues of human racism and profiling kind of collapses in on itself when you need to lean in on the nature of these “characters” for prop gags, so what you’re ultimately left with is a string of lowbrow gags and occasional shock comedy that lands with about a 50/50 success rate, with some being lame in terms of set up and some being drawn out far too long.

The gags that due land  however, provide some decent chuckles and McCarthy’s surprisingly solid chemistry with a puppet manages to keep the brisk hour and a half long runtime for the movie chugging along at a decent clip with little to no dragging.

“The Happytime Murders” is a fairly throwaway story existing almost solely to setup the gags of its premise but I think its grandest sin was more or less the misfortune of being a hard sell that ultimately settles on being lowbrow and middle of the road when its very existence had a lot to prove.

For all of its occasional hiccups however, I’ll be a happy camper if even half of the upcoming movies on Crapshoot’s docket are half as pleasantly surprising and inoffensive as this.