JD Hansel: The Happytime Murders. So it's now at the point where it's nominated for Razzies. It was a thoroughly hated movie, even if it was in some respects very impressive, and we discussed it on the show before, it was, boy! It wasn't just the people who hate Melissa McCarthy who hated this, it seems like critics and the internet all united together to hate HM. I still think as a movie, it could've done a better job of managing audience's expectations since the whole thing is about subverting audience's expectations, they needed to know what knowledge the audience was going in with, what the audience thought they were going to see, as a director, Brian Henson should have figured out how this thing was gonna be marketed, 'cause given the film's hook and the stuff that was talked about in press and interviews beforehand, Melissa McCarthy saying "It's sex and puppets combined! Who could resist this?" They should have been able to figure out what people were coming in expecting to see, how people expected different children's puppet shows, Sesame, Muppets and all that to be parodied or lampooned in this, and made sure they handled it appropriately. But as it is now, it's not a movie that I hate, it's a movie I can watch again, it's just not a movie that was as good as it could have been.
Jarrod Fairclough: I said this in our review episode: A lot of the blame has to go to the promotion of that film, cause it was not promoted well at all. Even to the point where Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale, none of them went on any talk shows to promote it. It was almost as if they didn't want it to exist. Like they wanted to forget they made this big film.
JD: Or there's also a matter of money here. The reason why Mark Hamill is gonna go to different talk shows and promote a Star Wars movie that he thinks shouldn't exist, Disney has the money to make that happen. This was a fairly small film when you think about it, the Henson Company isn't a major studio, STX is also not that big. So I don't think they had the power to write in the contract, "The reason we're paying you this money is cause you also have to go around and promote it." So the fact that as many people knew about it, compared to how small it was in comparison to the summer blockbusters and stuff, it's kinda impressive.
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