Bonkers Buddy

2 stars

There have been some hilarious ‘news’ stories lately about parents being outraged because they took their little kids to see Buddy, thinking it was a family-friendly film and that the chubby orange unicorn on the poster was a next-generation Barney. They didn’t research the movie or notice it was rated R. They just saw a chance for a little peace and quiet in the dark while their kids stared at the screen. 

Then the kids in the film started dying. Actually, that’s too kind. The kids in the movie were being brutally murdered by their new big orange friend.

Outrage! Refunds! The birth of the #buddytoo movement in the local cineplex. 

Of course, it sounds more like a great PR stunt than reality, but who’s to say? Stranger ‘news’ items are posted on the internet 24 hours a day. And nobody ever lost money betting on the parenting skills of others. Still, the timing seemed suspect.

Which, of course, has almost nothing to do with the actual movie and if it’s worth watching, whether you want to terrorize your offspring or not. In fact, for a lot of adults – Ok, me- the highest level of anticipation of going to see Buddy is the idea of watching some cheesy childhood TV mascot go nuts with an ax the minute the photogenic little rugrats start singing. And on that level, Buddy delivers. The kills are plentiful and inventive and seem perfectly timed to bring relief just as the saccharine levels of the show within the movie hit overload. Director Casper Kelly (V/H/S Halloween, “Fun Size” segment) does a good job of building up the tension between the grizzly murders, showing a real talent for making the blank stare of an orange doll feel increasingly menacing. His casting Keegan-Michael Key as Buddy’s voice is genius.

While it’s fun to watch while the orange unicorn is killing kids (as twisted as that reads), Buddy goes off the rails almost as soon as it leaves the confines of its imaginary studio environs for some ‘real world’ adventures. The bigger the world Buddy and his potential victims go through, the thinner the story gets stretched. Kelly, who co-wrote the script with Jamie King (Jessica Jones), swings for the fences with some of his ideas, particularly the notion that the Buddy in the movie wasn’t the first and won’t be the last, but they feel sketched in rather than fully developed. (There is an argument that the orange monster with the yellow mane killing the world is some sort of allegory for America’s current political situation, but that’s really stretching it.)

There are some great characters/performances add to the story, including the talented Cristin Milioti (Penguin) as Grace, a mother obsessed with the idea that her family of four used to be a family of five, and an unhinged cameo appearance by Clint Howard as George, a truly lost soul wandering the wastelands with his puppet sidekick Willie (voiced by Michael Shannon). There is also a distracting appearance by Topher Grace as Grace’s prick of a husband, Ben, but it’s only there to focus our anger so we root even more for Grace to win.

Horror fans, the intended audience of the film, are sure to get a kick out of parts of Buddy; his instant way of slimming down to fit through a manhole will live in their gore-filled hearts for a long, long time. Fans of cutting edge comedy will have some fun, too, as will anyone with memories of watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse imagining what would happen when Paul Reubens finally flipped out and the Secret Word of the Day became “Murder”. (For the record, he never did.) The merely curious can wait till Buddy comes to one of their streaming platforms, maybe watch it with friends who also feel traumatized by a childhood of watching Barney & Friends, the friends who still break out into a cold sweat when they hear I Love You.

For the truly twisted, those who have children, nieces, nephews or friends with kids they want to influence while they’re young, Buddy should be out on DVD in time for Christmas.