Last month, The Happytime Murders opened to a pretty tepid response, both critically and financially. Having a budget of $40 million, not including advertising, so far the movie has only made half of that back and it’s been out for well over three weeks. To make matters even worse, one of those weekends was Labor Day weekend, which usually means an extra day or two for improved box office totals since most people are off work. It placed eighth for the overall weekend. For perspective, Mission Impossible: Fallout, a movie released at the end of July, placed in third.
Why did The Happytime Murders bomb? And let’s not mince words here, the movie is a catastrophic bomb. Why couldn’t it get more audiences into theatres? If I was to hazard a guess, the reason is two-fold. One, the reviews destroyed any chance of an average person going to see it. It currently holds a 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I personally think the movie isn’t that bad, Rotten Tomatoes does hold a lot of weight for some people when deciding on what movie to see. The other reason, and the one that is more interesting to look at, is that the comedies studios are putting into theatres just aren’t funny at all.
Source: Destructoid Comedies today are a tragedy