PLOT: A young girl and her friends are held captive in a 1990s children’s TV program by a psychopathic humanoid unicorn named Buddy.
REVIEW: It’s hard to believe that Too Many Cooks came out twelve years ago. For those of you checking out this review who may be too young to remember, this was an Adult Swim video spoofing ’80s TV sitcom credits which, in the space of eleven minutes, descended into absolutely brilliant depths of lunacy. It was one of the OG “viral” videos, and now its director, Casper Kelly, aims to recapture some of its magic in his ambitious horror flick, Buddy, which made its world premiere here at the Sundance Film Festival as part of its midnight program.
Buddy spoofs 1990s children’s TV programming, in particular Barney & Friends, with the titular character a large, orange unicorn who teaches his child friends about things like chores, baseball, and dancing. Too bad he’s also psychopathic, and when one day one of his young friends decides they don’t want to participate in his latest lesson, all hell breaks loose as a few of the kids start to realize something evil is going on.
The first half hour of Buddy is mostly brilliant. It unfolds as a series of “Buddy” episodes that get progressively darker, leading to a few of the kids, led by the brave Freddy (Delaney Quinn), planning an escape to “Diamond City,” a place outside of the increasingly psychopathic Buddy’s reign.
As voiced by Keegan Michael-Key, Buddy is a dead-on spoof of Barney, who held a special place in pop culture for those of us old enough to remember the nineties. Buddy largely relies on nineties nostalgia to be effective, meaning this film might not appeal to younger horror fans, with Gen X and older millennials more the target audience. Kelly, who clearly has studied all of these shows to death, does a wonderful job creating a sinister variation, loaded with puppets and costumed characters, one of whom — a backpack named “Strappy” — is voiced by Patton Oswalt.
It’s too bad that Buddy goes off the rails in a big way after its terrific first act, as it takes a detour into the “real world” to spend some time with a suburban mom (Cristin Milioti) and dad (Topher Grace) who may have a connection to the Buddy universe. It’s here that Milioti’s Grace emerges as a secondary protagonist to Quinn’s Freddy, and while she’s strong as always, when it’s operating in the “real world,” the movie loses a lot of steam.
Luckily, things pick up in the final act, which is more like the first part of the movie, returning us to Buddy’s world, but it’s never quite as good as it was in that pretty dazzling first act. At ninety minutes, Buddy feels a little too much like a terrific short film that’s been padded out (too much) to feature length, and it drags.
Even still, one has to admire the creativity behind the film, with Kelly crafting a demented satire of children’s TV programming. Keegan Michael-Key is terrific as Buddy, sounding like a dead-on accurate evil cousin to Barney, while Quinn is a likable child heroine. There are also some nifty cameos, including Clint Howard, and a voice role for none other than Michael Shannon.
While it’s inconsistent, Buddy is worth watching, even if only for its absolutely brilliant first act. While it doesn’t quite work as a film and likely won’t be much more than adult curiosity, I imagine a lot of folks who grew up in the nineties will have a lot of fun with it.
