Review: Buddy
The true horror of Buddy may just be reminding us of Barney's mid-90's reign of terror as the star of an inescapably popular children's program.
If you're not a parent, I imagine that most kids' entertainment seems the same to you. Maybe the creme de la creme will break through and you'll give it a shot - I know childless adults who sing the praises of Coraline or Paddington 2, for example - but the individual merits of the Disney channel afternoon slate are none of your concern. When you have kids, you quickly identify the massive chasm between a mildly charming children's program and `the most cloying, incident-free fluff that is available, and effectively navigating what your child watches can have an outsized impact on your sanity. Before Caillou or The Teletubbies ever drove moms across the country to jumpstart their wine consumption by lunchtime, Barney the big purple dinosaur was terrorizing everyone over the age of six with his omnipresent cheeriness and oppressive lack of irony. I was a teenager when Barney & Friends was at the height of its popularity, and even to me it seemed inescapable. These were the days of basic cable rather than infinite streaming, so second-hand exposure to the show through siblings of friends, casual channel surfing, and general pop culture ubiquity was inevitable. It may seem weird to be impacted by a program that you don't watch and is clearly not meant for you, but believe me when I say that everybody knew and hated that big dumb dinosaur. The two moments in my lifetime when it felt like American sentiment was truly of one accord were immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the SNL skit where Charles Barkley brutalized Barney in a pick up basketball game.
Buddy, the big orange unicorn who is the antagonist of the new horror-comedy that shares his name, is an unapologetic facsimile of Barney. From the character design, to the show-within-the-movie aesthetics, to the pitch-perfect child acting, the filmmakers have replicated the Barney & Friends vibe to a tee. The movie does use the real world as a setting, but spends the majority of its time inside the universe of Buddy's television show. I don't mean on the set of a children's entertainment production, but in a sort of pocket dimension where the show takes place, where the lessons are uncomplicated, and where a new day only dawns once Buddy receives his end-of-episode hugs for solving everyone's problems. I love the choice to immerse us so deeply into the hyper-artificial world of Buddy's show, and it was delightfully disorienting to spend the first ten minutes or so of the movie feeling like I was literally watching a block of PBS programming from 1993. I don't want to spoil too much because I think this is a movie that benefits from having limited information going in, but the crux is that Buddy has a very specific set of expectations of his world and the people (mostly kids) who occupy it, and turns violent and unpredictable when those expectations aren't met.
Buddy was a really fun way to spend 90 minutes, particularly for someone my age who remembers the specific type of thing that is being spoofed. My kids also enjoyed it, without the nostalgia (anti-nostalgia?) for the source material to rely on. I would suggest it leans more comedy than horror, although it doesn't shy away from death and carnage. It simply isn't particularly scary, which is ok, that's a tough needle to thread. The plot mechanics are solid, and while some deeper lore is hinted at, I think we are presented enough on screen to make sense of what is going on, and the movie does a good job justifying its unusual setting and structure. There are a couple of times where things get uncomfortably sexual (although thankfully not involving the kids), and I'm not sure what purpose they served other than to add another layer of shock value - even in the morally depraved world of Buddy, those moments seemed out of place. Mostly, the movie succeeds on its premise and the strength of the acting. The child actors, especially, are terrific at nailing the precocious over-acting called for by the Buddy Show, but slipping further into their real personalities the more the show's universe starts to unravel. Cristin Milloti is great as a mom who is searching for her lost daughter, and the voice acting from some all stars (Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt, Clint Howard) is also quite good. Not the least of which is Keegan Michael Key as the titular Buddy, who gives a committed and oddly nuanced performance that successfully masks the identity of the actor.
I dug Buddy, and I'm sure it will be a rewatch candidate once it hits streaming later this year. Upon first watch, I don't necessarily think it has too much below the surface, but that's ok. At the outset, the movie makes an overture towards exploring the idea of conformity and what it is that we're actually teaching our kids with these kinds of shows, but that thread falls by the wayside pretty quickly. Still, it is the type of premise that could have easily led to a lousy cash-grab scenario like the slate of slashers that seized on Winnie the Pooh or Steamboat Charlie as soon as they hit the public domain, but instead it is a lovingly crafted pastiche that cares enough to get the details right. I suppose I'd like every movie I watch to house insightful complexities underneath the surface that challenge the way I think about the world, but I am wise enough to appreciate the ones with more modest ambitions when they are as well-paced, legible, and entertaining as this one.
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