Starring: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Patton Oswalt, Keegan-Michael Key Written by: Casper Kelly, Jamie King Directed by: Casper Kelly
Sesame Street is a goddam miracle. It might be the only live-action children’s program in history that doesn’t have some subtle throughline of creepiness running through it. Chalk that up to the genius of Jim Henson.
But outside of the Street, children’s television is a cringe fest. Buddy is about that off-putting vibe you can’t help but pick up from Barney, Teletubbies, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse or, gulp, Blippi. That feeling that watching adults skipping around creating an alternate children’s reality—even with the best educational intentions—just somehow feels fucked up.
The movie takes that idea to its logical conclusion, with Buddy—a big, goofy orange unicorn who likes to sing songs—snapping when the show’s children break from his feel-good, lessons-learned routine. His rage takes aim at the kids on the show, anthropomorphized objects like clocks and mailboxes, and adults playing “grown-up” professionals like mailmen and nurses.
The way Buddy drops you into the world and quickly establishes the storyline is a lot of fun. The movie recreates the look of a 90s-style kid’s show (complete with 4:3 aspect ratio), blending in-show and off-show action in a way that keeps you on your toes. And just as the setup begins to lose its luster, the movie unlocks another facet of its story featuring Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace. Unfortunately, as the movie trudges on, and its novelty falls away, both the comedy and horror start to fade too.
In a year that has seen a number of YouTube creators score feature film success, Buddy—whose co-writer and director Casper Kelly is not actually a YouTuber (though his great Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks did go viral on the channel)—might be the most YouTube-ian of the bunch. This feels like a supercharged YouTube series playing on the big screen.
I think that’s part of the reason it’s playing so well with young audiences (it has earned over $20M at the U.S. box office on a $3M budget). But it has a similar problem to YouTube-creator films like Iron Lung and Backrooms where it’s more concerned with mythology than all the narrative threads fitting together.
In the end, while Buddy is wildly unique (you won’t see another movie like it in theaters this year), I still wanted it to go a little more bonkers. If our starting point is a murderous unicorn, you’d think it’d really go for broke and grab that golden horn.