A killer Barney movie that’s all goofy voices and blood and less daring.
“Buddy” is a horror comedy of sorts that seems to be some kind of cross between “Barney & Friends,” “Death to Smoochy,” “The Happytime Murders,” “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” any version of “The Banana Splits,” “Poltergeist,” “Sesame Street,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and even “The Truman Show” if you look closely. I’m thinking that if “Late Night with the Devil” can have fun with horrors caught on cable TV, then maybe “Buddy” can have fun with itself. But the movie sells itself short and relies on more carnage and stupid choices and less nostalgia and humor.
The first half hour of the film introduces us to Buddy (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), an orange unicorn, whose 90s show is full of happy humans and puppets. He starts off as a stuffed animal, until somebody says his name and comes to life. The first few episodes slowly reveal his true, murderous colors when he kills a bratty kid (Luke Speakman), and four kids named Freddy (Delaney Quinn), Wade (Caleb “CJ” Williams), Oliver (Tristan Borders), and Hannah (Madison Skyy Polan) all try to escape from him.
And after the half hour is over, we enter the real world where a mom named Grace (Cristin Milioti) suspects that something is amiss in her life, while her husband (Topher Grace) thinks she’s crazy. So, she hires a spiritual medium (Brooke Bloom) to help her find out about her situation, and it leads to Buddy being on TV. And she eventually ends up sucked into the TV with great special effects, and ends up as a nurse character on the show. Her memory is wiped clean, but it eventually comes back when Freddy meets her.
“Buddy” was co-written and directed by Casper Kelly, who also directed a segment in “V/H/S/Halloween” and two “Adult Swim Yule Log” TV movies, and co-written by Jamie King, who also wrote episodes for “Jessica Jones.” There are concepts that do work. For example, the end credits come on when Buddy hugs the kids. But when they burn half his face, and he’s hugging only one dead kid, the credits can’t come on. It’s like when the episode ends, he regenerates back to his original self. Think about it. Does Wile E. Coyote keep the same injuries from the last cartoon? Does Tom the cat? Do Red & Stimpy? Do Ed Edd n Eddy? No. So, that makes sense.
The puppetry is amazing and consistent of old shows with them. Like we have Patton Oswalt voicing a backpack, Michael Shannon as a Howdy Doody doll, Clint Howard as his human counterpart, and Eric Bauza providing the voices of a mailbox, a wishing well, a couch, a garbage can, and a flower. And we have actors wearing the animal suits. So, a horror movie like “Buddy” is able to break free and do things never seen on a children’s show. It works at first (and we see a kid urinating on a flower puppet as if he was Dorothy Gale taking an apple from a tree), but then it starts to wear out its welcome.
A better, wiser horror splice to see “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which spliced “Friday the 13th” with “Sunset Boulevard” and knew how to have fun with both genres. It knew a great character study, and knew how to satirize characters making poor choices in an 80s horror movie. Most of these kids in “Buddy” have to make stupid choices by sometimes standing around and hugging the unicorn despite all the carnage he’s pulling off. Is this supposed to be a satire? Probably, but it’s all exhausting. And as likable as Milioti and Quinn are in their roles, their plot twist is too obvious.
In Select Theaters This Friday
