Buddy Movie Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] subversive and incredible Too Many Cooks was when it aired with zero warning and zero fanfare in the Dead of Night on Adult Swim in 2014. In 11 minutes, director Casper Kelly staged what starts as a sendup of 80s and '9s multicam

[00:17] sitcom intros, but rapidly devolves into a mediumbreaking surrealist nightmare. Too many >> though. Carrie Kelly that bait and switch energy into 2021's featurelength Adult Swim U Log. It's Buddy that feels

[00:33] like the true spiritual successor to Too Many Cooks. Initially presenting as an program in the vein of Barney and Friends, Buddy similarly uses the saccharine trappings of that medium as a delivery system for an edgy, clever

[00:49] descent into madness. I'm Tom Jorgensson and this is my review of Buddy.

[01:04] opens Buddy, is even done. The film's 1990s appropriate 43 aspect ratio, soundstage style camera coverage, and cheery aesthetic all wonderfully establish the bounds of its kids show form. Buddy the Unicorn, voiced by

[01:18] Keegan Michael Key. Don't believe dotes on the kids that spend all of their time at the clubhouse and along with other anthropomorphized objects teaches them responsibly use household cleaning products. The episode ends, the credits

[01:33] roll, and life begins a new the next day. It's a cycle that, as the kids come to realize, obiscates much more malicious intentions on Buddy's part. The film's first act is squarely focused on reinforcing the slipping of the

[01:46] rosetinted glasses with which the kids see the world. And Keegan Michael Keyy's vocal performance of the orange unicorn reinforces those tonal shifts. Well, reinforces those tonal shifts. Well, >> great work, Gig. So fun. Don't go in the

[02:00] >> great work, Gig. So fun. Don't go in the clubhouse. I just mopped. Key is adept at modulating the loveydovey musicality of Buddy's voice with hints of danger that don't make things too sinister too quickly, so that when there are bursts

[02:13] of violence early on, they do feel surprising and gnarly. central conceit and how it plans to push that forward. One of the kids tires of

[02:28] Buddy pretty much immediately, and the fallout of that slight attracts the curiosity of Freddy, another kid in Buddy's thr. Delaney Quinn's performance, like Keys, is impressive in its control, never getting ahead of

[02:41] given point. >> I'm scared. >> It is. >> Sure. The rest of the kids who make up Buddy's gang get the occasional chance to shine, but Freddy's the only one who

[02:54] really has space to develop her character past a caricature of kid with fewer lines than others in an episode of Barney. Tone really is the highlight of Buddy. The undercurrent of wickedness, which royals into view more and more as

[03:07] the movie goes on, is very well-managed, and no doubt it's Kelly's signature strength. Too Many Cooks has inspired countless imitations in the 12 years since its release, but Buddy proves that Kelly is at the top of his class when it

[03:21] comes to weaponizing smiley vapid positivity into a dark funhouse of The filmmaker rebels in revealing more about talking inanimate objects like Strappy, Mr. Mailbox, Charlie the Train, and to what degree

[03:34] they are able to see past Buddy's smokec screen. Patton Oswalt's Strappy in particular becomes a very enjoyable partner to Freddy and the other kids. And though he never has much dialogue all at once, he does make every line

[03:47] count. Michael Shannon double dips as both Charlie the Train and a second anthropomorphic character who's paired with the movie's best cameo appearance in a sendup of a different style of children's programming that feels

[03:59] especially insane in a movie that already feels especially insane up to that point. As mentioned before, the production design by Anna Kathleen and Devin Hawk's Lello's puppet design are real highlights in Buddy. Critically

[04:13] important to the movie's overall success. The primary colors and chunky cartoonish build quality of the set perfectly thread the needle of Kelly's obvious inspirations so that no single ingredient in the cosmic gumbo feels too

[04:27] overpowering, which is enough to leave Buddy feeling well- definfined enough to stand on its own. Lello's puppet work is multi-functional here and also well representative of Buddy's tone, presenting an extremely appealing veneer

[04:40] that has room on the inside for all sorts of viscera and nastiness that's always satisfying to see spill out into the open. Music is also a huge part of Buddy's identity with Kelly's Too Many Cooks songwriter Shawn Coleman providing

[04:53] singongy diddies that feel true to the movie's lineage and become more might expect. You move your leg like this and swing your arms to the side. >> Even though the particulars of how Buddy's mask starts to slip are fun to

[05:08] track, the film's early adherence to the visual language of children's shows does wear thin quickly, and pacing becomes Buddy's only significant downfall throughout. That Buddy feels as long as it does, even at just 96 minutes, is

[05:22] most attributable to how the nature of the story opens the doors for the kids to question just why they spend so much time at Buddy's Clubhouse, which in turn leads to them pushing the boundaries of their own existence. The mechanics of

[05:35] how all that fits together give the movie a stopand start quality that leaves the momentum of the full piece a little lacking. Despite the clarity and strength of the film's tone being incredibly steady, even if the pacing

[05:47] isn't always, that does end up drawing an outsized amount of attention to the visual inconsistencies that are present. As we, the audience, watch Buddy, the homebased look of that full screen 43 aspect ratio is meant toote that we're

[06:01] experiencing the Buddy TV show as reality, almost as if it's like found footage. But later in the movie, we have caused to see footage from that TV show displayed on widescreen TVs. In those moments, the buddy TV show is displayed

[06:16] in the more modern 16-9 aspect ratio. This is a nitpick, sure, but the harder a director pushes a high concept like buddies, the more cohesive small details need to be so as not to break suspension of disbelief or an audience's

[06:30] willingness to accept that what they're seeing is true. It's not a major distraction, but creating a world so worthy of close inspection does create a double-edged sword that Kelly occasionally slices himself on. Buddy's

[06:44] twists and turns deserve to be preserved as much as possible, but that sense of exhaustion that I felt early on with Buddy's initial formal identity does improve and take its most interesting turn when Kristen Milli and Toeer

[06:57] Grace's far more grounded characters come into play. Going into act two, when Buddy starts to reveal the shape of where the story is going, Millieotti becomes the movie's MVP. As she becomes aware of Buddy's true nature, Millotti's

[07:11] grace provides the movie with a lot of depth through her skillful and adaptive performance. Her own command of tone is on its strongest display during a truly uncomfortable encounter between her and Buddy, which sees a dark movie go even

[07:26] darker than you could probably imagine. Movies like Five Nights at Freddy's, Willy's Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey have been pushing the stock of mascot horror up for years now, but Buddy stands apart in how it calls

[07:39] attention to the dangers of using toxic positivity to distract from darker corners of the day-to-day experience. At a certain point, you do get a really clear sense of where Buddy is going to wind up, but as with life, the journey

[07:52] is the destination here. And Kelly throws more than enough curveballs along the way to keep the somewhat predictable ending from feeling dissatisfying. ending from feeling dissatisfying. >> That's how you do the Buddy.

[08:04] >> Buddy is getting an eight from me. With the brute force of director Casper Kelly's impressive command of tone, Buddy overcomes some woefully inconsistent pacing to deliver a nightmarish, exciting, funny

[08:16] deconstruction of children's programming. Keegan Michael Key does a great job supporting that tone through his bubbly and then bearish performance, but Kristen Milli and Delaney Quinn each steal the show as well-drawn characters

[08:29] who attack Buddy's hold on them from different angles. Strong production from feeling like it's taking inspiration too liberally from any one source. And all of that leaves Buddy standing on its own as a singular

[08:43] satisfying horror comedy. Thank you so much for watching. For more movie Insidious Out of the Further and Coyote versus Acme. And for everything else movies, you're already in the right place. IGN