Buddy is Not Your Friend

August 29, 2026842 words

dinkleberg

I may just be the target demographic for Buddy, Casper Kelly’s feature film directorial debut. I went to a different theater than my usual choice, since this isn’t a very wide release. This particular theater is in the back of a mall. It’s an AMC, but it retained the charm and character of the independent 4-auditorium mini-plex of the nineties. The auditoriums are much smaller, about fifty-two seats, and instead of the stadium seating, it’s a gentle decline to the front of the auditorium.

The theater was half-filled, mainly with other couples. Page and I took our seats and as the lights went down, the oddest thing happened. Everyone started snickering, they were stifling laughter. I couldn’t put together why. It was so odd.

The Film

The film follows Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and a semi-rotating cast of characters on a fictional TV show, “It’s Buddy” starring Buddy (Sergey Zhuravsky as “The Shape” and Keegan-Michael Key as the voice), a Barney-like orange unicorn. On the surface, it plays out exactly like a late 90s children’s show, including the little video interstitials that play out scenes of children re-enacting the lessons learned on the show. The first act plays out in episodes, complete with a theme song and full end credits. It’s part Barney and part Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Our first episode covers “dancing” where Freddy is afraid to dance, and ladies and gentlemen, we have a theme: It’s brave to be scared (I may be butchering the quote, please be kind, I’m so weak).

Josh (Luke Speakman), however, isn’t scared. He’s too busy reading A Wrinkle in Time to join Buddy and friends in their dancing. Buddy tries several times to get him to join in on the festivities, but being a bad improv partner, Josh denies his premise over and over, and they have a scuffle off screen while Mr. Mailbox watches in horror.

The next episode, Buddy explains that Josh loved dancing so much, he went out to Diamond City to dance, but Freddy finds a bloody book left behind and begins to fear Buddy, questioning his motives.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Grace (Cristin Milioti) starts to feel off, like she’s missing something. An empty chair at dinner, the gap in the stick figure family on the back of her mini van, an overall sense of dread; she can’t quite put her finger on it, and her husband Ben (Topher Grace), couldn’t be less interested if he tried. Grace dives deeper into madness until she sees It’s Buddy on the TV late one night and is pulled into the sideways world of this seemingly benign mascot.

The Review

Buddy is a film that subverts expectations at each turn. Every time I thought it would zig, it zagged. It’s gross; it starts with dismemberment of Mr. Mailbox and ramps up very quickly to the murder of the actors on the show. I didn’t think I could get grossed out by the murder of puppets, but the intricate anatomy they give Buddy and friends really made me sick at the end.

Kelly is not precious with his the other half of his cast either. I kept thinking back to the anecdote surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining; to protect his child actor, Danny Lloyd, he told him they were making a drama and during a pivotal scene between Winnie and Jack, he replaced the actor with a doll. Casper Kelly shielded these young actors from nothing. There’s no doubles, no sly cutaways, just violent puppets chasing these kids around a 90s set. It’s wild, it’s rock-and-roll, and I was kind of jealous. I would’ve killed to do something like this as a kid.

The cast is so stacked, Cristin Milioti give a great performance of this grieving mother that can’t put a name to her feelings of loss and depression. My heart broke for her. I still can’t quite believe that Keegan-Michael Key voiced Buddy. It’s such a strong voice performance that when the credits rolled, I still couldn’t believe it. Speaking of great performances, in the second act, we’re introduced to Clint Howard and a marionette named Willie voiced by Michael Shannon; two actors that never rest on their laurels. The main reason this film succeeds is because of the choice to cast puppeteers and puppet voice actors. There’s some Bonafide actors here, with credits from Donkey Hodie and Sesame Street.

It’s not a film for the faint of heart. It’s for people like me, who grew up watching Barney on VHS, and were terrified of Ronald McDonald when he would visit the local McDonald’s. I still remember a buddy showing me Too Many Cooks on his TV. I was blown away, it broke my brain the first time I saw it. Much like his debut piece, Kelly continues to defy expectations with his latest feature.