Remember Too Many Cooks? The Adult Swim viral sensation from Casper Kelly brought a singular weirdness and gruesome horror to classic sitcom tropes. It was damned hilarious, and it still is if you watch it today. Now Kelly is back with his debut feature film, and I promise you, it goes much much further. Buddy is a nightmarish horror-comedy for anyone who thinks Barney, and all of those strange TV shows from the ’90s with kids hanging out with giant anthropomorphic puppet creatures were a fast ticket to therapy.
Keegan-Michael Key voices Buddy, a giant anthropomorphic orange unicorn and star of a hit children’s television program where he hangs out in his own personal clubhouse with a group of amnesiac kids. But when one of the kids defies Buddy, new episodes get very violent very quickly.
The film premiered earlier this year at Sundance, and I quite enjoyed most of it. You can check out my review here. Basically, the further Kelly and co-writer Jamie King take things to the extreme, the better Barney gets. Nobody does meta horror with quite the same twisted logic as Kelly, and now that he’s in the world of features, his voice is only going to get louder.
Also in the cast are Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, Caleb “CJ” Williams, Luke Speakman, Patton Oswalt, Clint Howard, Michael Shannon, and Topher Grace.
Buddy opens in theaters on August 28th from Roadside Attractions and Saban Films.
