Buddy ReCrap

The year was 1994. A teenage Adam in his Optimus Prime was roaming around the house when he heard a a faint sound. A distinct sound, but faint. It was that of a giant purple piece of [ __ ] known as Barney. Now, I was again a high schooler, so I didn't pay any real attention to such silly mascots and children shenanigans. However, my sister, 10 years younger than me, was very much on board with the show. And this would be just but an entrance, a gateway drug into the hellscape. That would be my life when Barney would be on the TV. Now Barney came out, I believe, in '92. It would be a couple years later before my sister would really jump on the train and then we'd get the baby bop, we'd get the BJ, we'd get whatever that fourth yellow abortion was supposed to be. That the show was starting to age out. It was starting to phase out by the time we got to that character. What does not phase out though is the psychological trauma, the torture that I experienced watching Barney from a distance bet. Midler and then eventually really up close because it would be on in our household 24/7 365. And now, all these years later, what should I see hit the theaters but an ugly, disturbing reminder of a time once forgotten called Buddy, an Rrated hour and a half psychological warfare piece that hit the theaters. It was very popular. They expanded a little bit, but this is a movie that should have knocked it out of the park in terms of the the style, the setting, the story. And unfortunately for me, it gets halfway there. It edges but does not complete. And so today, I'm here to talk about the pros and the cons of the film, going through it to the best of my ability from front to back, from head to tail in a spoiler-filled breakdown video. So, bust out that Teletubby backpack, open up your bubble guppy trapper keeper, and get ready to take notes as I take you on a field trip to Buddy's World. Let's get on that magic school bus together. If you are new here on this adventure and you want to join me on further ones, feel free to sub to the show. It's completely free of charge. Much like Barney was for regular everyday TV goers. Although, in a sense, you did pay for Barney. You you paid for it up here. I love you. You hate me. Buddy nails the cadence, nails the style, nails the tone of the TV show. And for the first, I'd say 20 minutes, we open on the entirety of Buddy. The world, the characters, the [ __ ] couch with eyes, the clock with eyes, the everything has eyes. Everything has a life to it. Very reminiscent of a PeeWee's Playhouse in this department. The couches move in the the cushions to talk. The mailman tips the hat to the children as he delivers the mail in the friendly mailbox. Also, of course, has eyes and possibly a life, possibly that of a child. Here here's one of the many issues I have with Buddy outside of it being freaking flawless for the first half of the film is that it's not flawless in the second half and it really starts to go to [ __ ] in my opinion. Now, I still overall think this is a very good movie, but it could have been a great movie. In fact, it could have been in the top five for me this year, but it drops the ball. And one of the ways it does is through the story or lack thereof. See, we we have ourselves what I would imagine is a trilogy of films or more on our hands. They they definitely tease that later in the flick, but for right now, we just have like little breadcrumbs and snippets of concepts. So, the fact that the furniture is alive and the mailbox and all that stuff, you think, is is this like a kid trapped here, or are only the kids actual kids? Like I said, the first 20 minutes is going to play out just like your standard TV kids show, complete with all the like the cheesy music, the lame dance numbers, the the super challenging obstacles for our kids to overcome, such as being prepared for a dance competition. And that's going to lead us to the first wheel coming off. Kid gets the sneakers. Okay, he doesn't like wearing the sneakers. informs Buddy that he doesn't really care to dance, at least not in the moment. Maybe later. But Buddy's pretty persistent that this kid gets some [ __ ] shoes on and start dancing his heart out. He'll also just straight up apperate in front of him at points, posing a question early on. What What are the powers that this insane unicorn thing has, and why doesn't he use them more often later in the film? But I digress. Now he's starting to kind of question things. He's like, "Listen, dude. I just want to [ __ ] chill. I don't want to put on the shoes. I don't want to do a whole show. And so Buddy gets, you know, I I would say he gets annoyed in a fair way. I mean, I I'm a parent. I understand what it's like when your kid doesn't want to do what he's supposed to. You get a little upset. And so, we have other kids there. I believe there's a total of four. And they're still doing their show. They're still dancing and singing. There's going to be a point where the kids start to question why Sneakers McGee hasn't come back yet to the show. Well, they don't know they're in a show. Bear in mind, they think this is just the world to them. This is just real life for them. But they are going to find little key uh ingredients, little Q cards that are going to cue them in that something's a miss. For instance, they're going to find a book that one of the kids love to read. It's got some blood on it, which Buddy is going to say was paint. Yeah, nice try, pal. That these kids can spot blood a mile away. Okay, there's another character. I think it's like a cat or something. It's really creepy looking. She looks like [ __ ] and she's really funny at times giving like doofusy looks. And again, I'm thinking to myself, is this person being brainwashed? Are they part of the show? They're not in on it with Butad. She seems to be, you know, just really brainwashed. And so, I think it's another parent that's in a costume. But again, we we don't know enough when this movie winds down to know exactly what's even happening. Anyway, the kids are all doing their dance and the credits have now rolled several times in this first 20 minutes. We're we're in like these five minute slices of episodes and every time the credits roll, every time we go back to the children, they're a little bit more confused. Freddy is starting to wake up to what's going on. Things do not seem all sugar cubes and sticker packs over at Buddy's Playhouse. And so, she's going to do what kids are not supposed to do. ask questions. And this is going to lead to Buddy kind of getting caught in his own web of lies. And pretty soon, the wheels have come fully off, and the kids have found themselves trying to escape from Buddy's little play pen area, which is all fenced off. They're going to try to climb the fence and escape to freedom. But first, they attempt to hop on a train. And this is going to give us our awesome. By the way, I said this in the review, but the costumes, the set design, all this stuff is fanf freakingastic. It's onetoone with all the shows I grew up with or what or what my uh my sister grew up with. Now that we now I'm getting caught in my own lies. Does Adam even have a sister? Was he just sitting around jerking it to episodes of Barney? Anyway, they try to get on this magical train with the face and the, you know, the whole it's the whole Thomas the Choo Choo train engine situation going on. But this is where Buddy intervenes and he says, "You guys aren't going anywhere." And he grabs the face of the train, rips the thing off in front of the kids who freak out. I believe at the time of the train face removal, Hannah has joined the outfit. She's the new girl that showed up. I might be wrong on names and kids, but uh there is a new girl who I will later on believe is the daughter of the mom we're about to get introduced to this thing, but I will be wrong because she looks a lot closer to the mother character we're going to get to than the main girl does. The main girl looks nothing like Grace, who's played by Kristen Milladi. That's a pet peeve I have with a lot of more modern movies and shows where they're just not even attempting to cast kids that look like the parents. I I mean, she's not adopted. She's just straight up the kid of of Toe for Grace and Kristen Milotti. Looks nothing like him. Ju just just saying it's annoying. Anyway, the kids are going to eventually get over the fence except for one kid who does get impaled by Barney's horn. Wade is killed by the horn through the fence and then the kids make their way into the forest. Now, this is when the movie, I think at this point, is going to completely shift gears and get way more interesting because so far all we know is this fantasy little world that the kids are in. And we don't know if there's anything outside of that. Well, we're going to find out as the screen opens up to a beautiful 4K high-res widescreen edition. previously 4x3 aspect ratio as all artsy films do. And now we're going to meet the mother of Freddy, not the mother of Hannah or one of the other girls that looks more like the mom. No, it is of Freddy. This is where the movie gets very fascinating to me and it's why I said this could have easily been in my top five because we are going to be around the table with Grace, her husband Ben played by Toeer Grace. To toe for Grace, then there's there's Grace, the wife. a little complicated, a little confusing. And then their kids, I have no idea what their names are either. Child one through three. I think they have two boys and uh a missing kid. Or maybe they have three boys and a missing kid. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. What matters is they're missing a kid. And they don't know it. But in what I think is the greatest scene ever in this film, Grace is sitting at the table with the rest of the family. They're laughing. They're loving. They're having a good time. And suddenly she looks over at that empty chair. Her eyes widen and she loses her [ __ ] out of nowhere like like she saw a ghost. She freaks out in front of the family. She leaves the room. She calms down later in the bathroom. We're told for Grace's character is going to confront his wife say, "Hey, whoa. So that that just happened. Are you okay? Is everything all right?" At which point Grace says, "No, everything's not all right. I think we have another kid. I can't explain it. I don't know why this is happening, but I feel like we had a kid in the past and we don't anymore. We're gonna spend a good 20 minutes building this whole side of things up before we go back to Buddy's world. But in this time, I'm just incredibly on board. I'm fascinated. I love that she brings in a spiritual I think it's called a medium. You know, this house is clean. She goes around, she's checking under things. She goes to the office and she asks straight up, "Was this always an office or possibly a child's bedroom?" Uh, Ben says, "Listen, [ __ ] This was always an office, okay? Never anything before. Never going to be anything after." She leaves. Ben's pissed at his wife. I was with you through the kids, okay? I I put up with you during that whole fiasco of having children, but now you want to add more into the mix. Now you're making up kids to throw at me. What's your deal? She can't explain it, but she knows it's true. And he's not on board at all. He He's just absolutely useless. He's kind of a dick, which Toeer Grace is fantastic at playing. I love me some Eric Foreman. But this is where I'm very frustrated with the movie. We build all of the realworld stuff up only to not go back to it ever again. The script squanders what could have been such a fun revisit. It takes away the opportunity for a family reunion. It's just such a [ __ ] show in the script department. I cannot believe they dropped the ball on this. Instead, it does a very uninteresting thing in my opinion, which is have the mom get sucked into the TV without the rest of the family knowing. So, I don't know what that even means for them. Do they just instantly forget that they had a mom, too? Would have been nice to see that play out. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Instead, the movie decides in its infinite WISDOM TO JUST NOT ADDRESS IT AT ALL. Like all the other interesting concepts it brings up, it squanders him, throws him in the corner, LEAVES HIM FOR DEAD. Once the mom is now in the in the world, she is a nurse because the previous nurse was killed along with the mailman. At some point, Buddy kills the mailman by stabbing him through the the stomach and then spinning him around like a blood sack on top of his head. The same with the nurse. Uh she she dies. I don't remember how she dies. It's got to be pretty unremarkable. That's the other thing about the movie that I was really bummed out with is it doesn't go hard enough. You're doing a childhood thing that most people that watched Barney are now in their 30s and 40s or late 20s. They want to see the adult hardcore R-rated stuff. Not just a tippy toe above Five Nights at Freddy's in terms of violence. I wanted blood. I wanted vicious kills. I wanted Buddy just ripping the stuffing out of the couches, snapping necks, feasting on bodies. It would have been awesome. Instead, they're they're pretty tame kills overall. While the mom's nursing it up, the kids are off on their own pilgrimage. I'm I'm out of order. I understand. I'm I am out of order because the mom doesn't show up to the show until the kids return. I think it's it it doesn't really m Well, maybe not. I don't know because I do know Buddy molests her at one point. He um he goes into the room, he gives her a hug, and then he just starts licking her body with his tongue. And now, unfortunately, it's the only way I can achieve climax. I I I fancy her. I I fancy the actress with her unnaturally large Disney princess eyes. Okay, I'm a simple man. Anyway, this is where uh the movie also really starts to slow down and get very uninteresting for me. And that's when the kids are on this kind of yellow brick road adventure on their way to Emerald City. I don't remember what it's called in the in the show. It's like Crystal Palace or something. But they are going to run into a ventriloquist dummy and his best friend who's a kid who has been off in these woods for many a year. This boy is played by Clint Howard who has yet to find a shirt that fits because this thing is I mean this is a belly shirt. It's very unbecoming for the man. And he's kind of an unbecoming character. He's still very much lost in his boyish ways. He He's eating the plant life that also is alive. It's just a bizarre section of film where the kids are hanging out with him around a campfire. This whole campfire thing goes on for far too long and it ends with the dummy and Clint Howard's character stealing um the main girl's backpack, which is very reminiscent of like Adora the Explorer. They steal the backpack. They take off into the swamp area with it, which Buddy finally shows up roaming around the castle grounds. I believe he kills them both. He He takes an axe that he's uh, you know, walking around with, as one does if you're a giant orange unicorn for some reason. Kills Clint Howard, throws the dummy into the pond. It's kind of lame. But at that point, the kids have shown up on bikes, mailbox, weapon in hand, because they also took the mailbox with them from Barney's magical place. Why did they take the mailbox? Unclear. I don't know what's special about the mailbox, and we never actually find out. It just becomes a real mailbox at the end. So, I guess they do answer the question as to what the uh the different ornaments and the living objects are. They're just nothing. They're just regular objects that come to life in the the fantasy world. I was kind of hoping it was a Beauty and the Beast situation where, you know, Lumiere and Cogsworth were actual people that the help that were turned over, but no. In this instance, the mailbox is a mailbox, but we'll get there. In the meantime, they free the backpack, voiced by Patton Oswalt, and they head to Diamond City or whatever it's called. Doesn't matter. Take me down to the Diamond City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Yeah. Yeah. But once they get there, they find out it's a [ __ ] Willy Wonka situation. This thing's only the size of like their knee. It's an optical illusion. It falls over like a cardboard stand, which is exactly what it is. And uh-oh, buddy's home. He grabs the kids, brings them back to his place so they can relive the magic of a TV show over and over again. Now that the kids are back at the campgrounds, they they have a couple maybe just a day where they're going to kind of go through the motions and be back with Buddy singing and dancing after all. Mrs. Mrs. Francine. Freddy is going to get a boo boo. So Buddy says, "Listen, go on over to the nurse, get it patched up, come back here, we'll have a whole kumbaya thing." She goes to the nurse. And it does not take long for them to realize, "Mama, da, they are mother daughter." Da da was short for daughter for some reason. And they embrace. It's a beautiful moment and I sure can't wait to see them get out alive is what I said to myself before 10 minutes later THE MOM IS KILLED OFF. COME ON. THE LAST time I was this dissatisfied I found out I was going to be a father. Now we're going to get to the final section of the movie. The weakest for me. Some people in the comments have told me that it's actually the best. I I disagree because here's what's going to happen. Buddy's going to show his true form. He's going to change into this giant black monster creature with long nails and a and an elongated neck and kind of a dinosaur face. It looks silly though, and I get that that's the point. It's supposed to be a giant puppet thing like everything else, but I was kind of hoping it'd be a lot more vicious, a lot more like um I don't know what are those maybe a guy in a costume. Think like Ninja Turtles, Secret of the Ooze, Raja and whatever the wolf guy is. I forgot the name of those dumb characters, but they had some cool design, you know, like you can make that scary in a sense. Why did I go there? Out of all the things I could pull out of my ass, I go to Teenage Mut Ninja Turtles 2 and the Secret of the Use for a reference point. Moving on, he starts to go after the kids who are going to attempt to get down the wishing well. The wishing well up until this point has been kind of just, you know, a background character. Uh, it throws a Frisbee out from time to time when the kids get one tossed down there. And they believe that this is their ticket off campus. So, they're starting to go down the rope, but Buddy has come over. He's craving. He's pissed. He killed off his sidekick, that bunny mouse cat thing. And he's about to take out the kids. And that's when the mom is going to step up and get them to freedom. This scene is incredibly poorly done. The mom nurse is like, "Hey, [ __ ] come get me." Uh, buddy, who walks super slow, like a barely over turtle speed, is coming towards her. She could easily just run around the house and and go down the well because we've only seen Buddy do the warp thing once, and that was in the first five minutes of the show. I don't even know if he has the powers anymore. Uh because he's starting to lose his regeneration ability and his ability to use some of his magical powers altogether because he's not able to get those credits to come up. Credits equal Wolverine regeneration. Why? Unclear. Nothing really adds up to anything. It's all just part of our childhood imagination, I suppose. What a copout. He gets her to the ground because she I don't know tripped and then he kills her in the most unsatisfying way possible. That's right. He kills the mother who has had all of 10 seconds to reunite with her daughter. With the mom now dead, the kids are able to go down the rope and enter a secret warehouse area where there's another random ass stuffed animal creation. Wow, I didn't know there were people here. It was some sort of a scientist thing. I actually don't know what the [ __ ] the purpose is of this character. Maybe he's just a rejected mascot that they decided not to use. There's probably more to unearth upon a rewatch or two, or maybe it's something that's going to be set up in in the second or third movie. Who knows? The weird scientist dude tells them how to get out of there, but it's just a little too late. Jojo with the mom dead than the dead dog that ever died and the kids down the well, Buddy has to figure out a way to fit his fat ass down there because as it currently stands that Ozmpic isn't kicking in and he's unable to squeeze through and not enough Krisco in the world is going to make a lick of difference. So he does the ultimate sacrifice. He takes a large ass knife and he starts cutting away at his thigh meat, hacking off both sides of his freaking girth so he can get down that rope. The two kids that aren't the primary are going to be killed. The boy eaten full just just full body eat, you know, sucked down like a rancor eating a nice meal. The girl gets her hair pulled through the door. She's gonzo as well, leaving Freddy to go out of this area. She lands on the other side of this world into a real life school which looks to be some sort of a brainwashing operation. She's running by different classrooms that have screens on with the buddy show. There looks to be some sort of headsets and and different stuff that would, you know, brainwash kids. As she's running around, Buddy has entered back into the chat. He's he's pretty hurt. You know, he's bleeding out the thighs. He's got his axe as he's hobbling along. And in our final scene, in the final kill shot, in our final kill shot, Freddy slips as all stupid kids do. Home Alone Marv slams onto her back. Buddy is about to hit her with the hatchet, which he utters the final goodbye, [ __ ] But using her stupid trusty friend, the mailbox, she thrusts upwards the body of Buddy, slamming down into it, impaling him like a [ __ ] flag. This is going to cause her to flee from the scene and enter another room that looks like something out of the architect's section of the Matrix where there's monitors everywhere with little kids looking on at the show buddy on the other side. One of the children even pokes his hand through the TV. You got the touch. You got the power. And Freddy makes contact. This leads her to go through a separate TV with her stupid mailbox and that's the point that it becomes real and she's very sad thinking that maybe her and a friend got out alive but that's not the case just her and we are going to find out she is not in her home but the home of I believe Hannah as the father is out back grilling up some grub he comes into the room and sees her and boom and credits hit and that my friends is Buddy it's Uh, certainly a ride. Um, I'm sure that I got some stuff wrong. There's no way I got that right. I saw it a couple weeks ago. If I don't talk about a movie like 24 hours after I've seen it, everything starts to go blotchy. And uh, 17 Netflix movies have taken that place that I've sadly wasted time watching since. Let me know your thoughts on Buddy. Were you as disappointed with the the third act as I was? Outside of the cool kill at the end, I just didn't like the whole kaiju look that they did with him. I hated that they killed the mom. It seemed just kind of mean-spirited. And not only that, it was unsatisfying. That's the part that bothers me. The film does such a good job of building up these these adults, their their relationship, how they're fighting about whether or not they have a kid. It did such a great job of building up the kids as being pretty damn intelligent and making smart choices for the most part, which was refreshing. And it just kind of dropped the ball on all of it. It did manage to sprinkle in some lore here and there. I don't know what it really adds up to. There was also a mural towards the end that shows Buddy with a couple more characters like him that we did not see in this film. Seems to be kind of setting things up for either a prequel or another, you know, a sequel down the road. Let me know your thoughts though. Were you satisfied or you like me and you thought h it was fine. I really wanted to love this one though. Again, think of subbing to the show. Adam does movies, liking, hyping, doing whatever if you're on YouTube. And hopefully I see you for the next one. Take care. Thanks again for watching the video. If you didn't know, I'm a oneman operation here at Adam Movies. I also have a full-time job. I got a family to take care of. And I would absolutely love if you supported me on patreon.com/adamdosmov like these beautiful people did here. These are the silver and gold members. There's also a bronze membership starting at $1, plus access to over 300 videos from the Atom vault at any support level. I would really appreciate it. It's the best way to support the show. Hope to see you there.