EVER wondered what the beloved Muppets do when children aren’t watching? That’s the jokey conceit behind this painfully unfunny, tired, pleased-with-itself, unkempt and icky bit of fluffy nonsense.

To be clear, this doesn’t feature the Kermit and co we know but rather presents a more “real” world in which humans and puppets co-exist in day-to-day life. The latter are looked down upon as second-class citizens who are regularly beaten up, spat on and disregarded for just being puppets.

In a seedy Los Angeles, disgraced police officer-turned-private detective Phil Philips (voiced by Bill Barretta) spends his day taking on any and all cases that will pay his daily fee.

One day he finds himself caught up in a case where the murder victims are the puppet stars of a ’90s kids’ TV show called The Happytime Gang. This leads him to be reluctantly teamed up with his ex-partner Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), both of whom hate each other’s guts, to help solve the case.

You have to wonder who this is exactly made for: those that have happy memories of puppets but want to see them swear, smoke, drink and have sex? Those who always hated them and were just waiting for them to have their fuzzy heads blown off? It’s certainly not made for those with even an ounce of wit in mind.

The potentially transgressive premise is stretched beyond all measure and leads to a soulless film that takes the concept of a one-note joke to new heights – hahaha, look at the cute puppets shooting guns and saying bad words, isn’t that hilarious!

It’s kind of bewildering that it’s directed by Brian Henson, son of legendary Muppets creator Jim Henson, because it so gleefully takes a knife to the very idea of the kid-friendly, affectionate, sharp-witted heart of what those puppets were and continue to be for generations.

It’s not that there’s anything terrible per se about the idea of satirising that happy-go-lucky ethos. But it spends its time with an incessant eye on trying to push buttons, mugging with a self-satisfied grin about just how edgy it thinks it’s being.

Offensiveness is its game with a one-upmanship mentality of tastelessness and vulgarity. Belittling jokes about McCarthy’s appearance is firmly on the menu, too, of course. But offensiveness for the sake of it quickly becomes dull and the film is content to ride that train the whole way.

Every minute crawls by with feckless gags and inane crudeness confused for clever subversion. Not being all warm and fuzzy may be the point but that doesn’t mean it has to be so damp and ugly.