What if Barney the friendly dinosaur was really a murderous monster? That’s the catchy premise of co-writer/director Casper Kelly’s surreal horror fantasy Buddy, a crazy yet admirably committed exploration of kids TV tropes to their fullest extent. Considering Kelly might be best known for his insane yet brilliant deconstruction of sitcom opening theme songs, the Adult Swim short film Too Many Cooks, this makes sense. My first question was whether the pastel-colored, stagey world of Buddy the Unicorn (voiced by Keegan Michael-Key) was supposed to be literally real or was simply a TV set. The universe of Buddy, while adhering to the tropes and mechanics of children’s TV storytelling, is indeed its own reality. I enjoyed how Buddy knows he must gather the children to sing the closing theme song because then “the words appear” (he means end credits) and everything resets, which would allow him to heal from his injuries or perhaps have the children forget witnessing his horrors. The puppet-heavy world of Buddy is interesting, as are the subversive and disturbing edges glimpsed like Buddy trying to explain the disappearance of a child and the strange “red paint” on his outfit. Short of twenty minutes, the entire movie takes place in this strange fantasy setting, so I kept wondering about the lore and workings of this universe, especially how Buddy is capturing kids from the real world. The last ten minutes fulfilled that but I wanted more. That’s because the Buddy set itself, modeled after PeeWee’s Playhouse and Barney, feels a little too closed-off, the building threat of Buddy being rather redundant. I became frustrated at how limited the movie was settling with its subversive satire, at several points feeling like an overextended skit going off the rails rather than a complete movie. Then again that structural gambit might appeal to other viewers who are on the same twisted wavelength of Kelly. It held my interest, but I kept wondering if this was all there was, and whether maybe Buddy was a little too much of the same.

Nate’s Grade: B-