Movie Review – Buddy

If you lived through the 1990s, especially if you were a teenager, then you remember how very creepy shows like Barney and Teletubbies were. Barney in particular invented a world where life’s lessons could be learned by singing a song and using the word love copiously. Sure, when you are a kid, maybe that makes sense. But in the year 2026, after everything we have all been through since the 90s, Barney’s schtick seems all the more useless.

Enter the film Buddy which is loosely based on Barney’s brand of love solves everything. It takes place almost entirely within the confines of the show’s fantastical world. The title character, an oversized orange unicorn, can only “reset” if he sings a song where everyone loves him at the end of an episode. A reset moves the show on to the next episode and he spends most of the film chasing the kids and trying to force them to hug him and sing to him to reset the day. The problem starts when one kid decides he just doesn’t want to dance or partake in whatever activity Buddy has planned. Buddy loses his cool and kills the kid in secret, and the next episode features a new kid as the replacement.

An orange narcissistic unicorn can’t possibly expected to discard of murder evidence, though, so when two of the other kids – Freddy and Wade – find a blood stained book that belonged to the dead kid, they start asking questions. These questions send the entire show into chaos. Blood soaked, violent, chaos. People die. Kids get scared. Buddy impales someone with his horn and he injures the talking mailbox for no apparent reason. There’s even a scene where the kids unwittingly get high by eating petals of cute little flowers on their journey through the show’s world. It’s like watching The Wizard of Oz if that film took place in Buddy’s show and Buddy is the Wicked Witch if she were violent and insane.

The only foray into the real world is when the show needs to replace its nurse whom Buddy killed and it ends up being Freddy’s mother. Freddy is a girl, by the way. When Freddy was apparently sucked into the show before the film’s starting point, it altered everyone’s memory in the real world so it seemed like she never existed in the first place. But her mother remembered and was treated like she lost her mind before she too was sucked into the television to be part of the show.

Their heartwarming reunion is near the end of a film that is so full of bonkers absurdities that that small part of normalcy, real actual love, grounded the film and made it work in a way that it wasn’t before. Buddy’s version of love is face value. Sing a song and say you love people, and everything will be okay. Except neither of those things solve complex issues or give any accountability for bad behavior. And let’s face it. Singing a song about cleaning will never make it fun.

As intentionally off-putting as Buddy’s world is, there is an undercurrent of reality that seeps into every scene. The kids are smarter and more perceptive than Buddy gives them credit for, something that adults do all the time. They are also stronger and braver than they themselves believe they are, a lesson they learn as the film progresses. While the absurdist gore and occasional swear word make the film hilarious to watch, it is the bravery of the kids and the real love between mother and daughter that give the film much needed heart.

Eli Roth gave us the severely disappointing Ice Cream Man earlier this summer. I hope Eli is paying attention because if you’re going to make a movie where children are forced into violent yet funny situations, you need to do it like Buddy did. Put them into the situation where a 90s kids show is their reality, and then turn it upside down by making the cute host psychotic. Buddy does a lot of things right. I laughed loudly several times. So did the middle age couple next to me and the group of teenagers in front of me who weren’t even alive when Barney and Teletubbies aired.

3.5 out of 5 stars for this bonkers little horror film about an orange unicorn.