Imagine, if you will, a TV show called “It’s Buddy”, which looks as if Stephen King was accidentally put in charge of PBS’ childrens programming.
Buddy is an imposing roly-poly orange unicorn who presides over a pastel play-land, where a happy group of multi-cultural children cavorts with characters such as “Mr. Mailbox” and “Couch-ee”, and sing songs about friendship and facing your fears.
However, Buddy’s cheerful disposition runs thin with Josh, a contrary little boy who is—heaven forbid!—a reader.
Josh mysteriously disappears. A young girl, Freddy (played by Delaney Quinn), starts to ask questions and raises an alarm that has the other kids trying to escape. And at that point, Buddy starts to act less like a happy purple dinosaur and more like Jack Torrance from “The Shining.”
The picture shifts to supposed “real life.” A suburban wife and mother named Grace (played by Cristin Milioti) suffers a mental break over the sudden feeling that something or someone is missing from her life.
She finds no answers from a lame psychic or from Topher Grace, playing the world’s most unhelpful husband.
Eventually, she becomes one of the disappeared and joins the adults and children who are mind-numbed inhabitants in Buddy-Land.
The film is written by Jamie King and Casper Kelly and directed by Kelly, who has a background in the weird cable world of Adult Swim. Buddy is voiced by comedian Keegan-Michael Key, adroitly blending the goofy and the frightening.
The episodes of “It’s Buddy” are all supposed to end the same way—with Buddy crushing his captive toddlers in a group hug, while the credits roll. Any disruption to that, and Buddy is liable to become an axe-wielding stalker.
He has to be loved. And the only effective Kryptonite is for the kids to curse him out, with appropriate bleep-worthy language.
The story falters toward the end. The filmmakers struggle for an inspired way to wrap up the plot and rely more on a high body count.
But I give “Buddy” four poison-candy hearts out of five. Even with its flaws, I can’t help liking it as an entry in our last Sundance—a fond farewell to the festival, and especially the sick and twisted Midnight Program that gave us such films as “The Blair Witch Project”, “Hereditary” and “Get Out.”
