What if the cuddly, loveable plush mascot of your kids’ favorite daytime TV show was actually a controlling, murderous sociopath? Director Casper Kelly’s comedy-horror film Buddy thankfully doesn’t just rest on this first-thought premise, instead adding in a twisted coming-of-age tale and a subplot about grief amongst the bloodshed. The gambit doesn’t always work, but Kelly is a master of subverting extremely specific, classic TV genres, so at the very least, there’s an incredible attention to detail to be found in every corner.

Those who grew up watching Adult Swim regularly in the 2010s likely know Kelly as the mastermind of viral shorts and fake commercials like “Too Many Cooks”, a bizarre skewering of 90s sitcom intros that quickly devolved into surrealism and murder. With Buddy, his first theatrically-released feature film, Kelly takes on shows like Barney and Friends and Gullah Gullah Island – seemingly innocuous programs where kids and adults interact with friendly-looking creatures and learn valuable lessons about sharing or cleaning up after oneself. The film begins, innocently enough, as a pitch-perfect episode of “It’s Buddy”, opening-credits song and all, and introduces us to Buddy’s world, a cheaply produced show where the matte-painted background is barely passable and the kids sing songs and play with the titular orange unicorn (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, with Sergey Zhuravsky as the man in the suit).

Everything is sunshine and rainbows as the gang is preparing for a big dance party, until one of the kids doesn’t want to learn how to dance, even without the aid of Buddy’s magic shoes. Unfortunately for him, Buddy doesn’t take too kindly to dissenters, and it’s not long before he’s disposed of off-screen. Kelly, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jamie King, infuses Buddy with pitch-black humor, especially as Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and Wade (Caleb Williams) begin to suspect that Buddy may have been responsible for their friend’s sudden disappearance. And so, the kids must escape Buddy’s clutches and travel to the mythical Diamond City to find some form of help.

Believe it or not, Buddy actually shares some structural DNA with Barbie: our heroes live in a candy-colored paradise, but cracks begin to form and they realize they must escape. And, much like Gerwig’s film, Kelly’s lags in excitement once the second act kicks in and we’re transported to the “real” world. We suddenly leave Freddy and the kids to find Grace (Cristin Milioti), a suburban mom of two who gets the nagging feeling that something, or someone, is missing from her life. These segments work fine enough, and Milioti, along with Topher Grace as her dipshit husband Ben, are able to deftly manage Kelly’s tonal swings. There is a tenuous thread to be found within the two worlds, as Grace becomes increasingly convinced, and horrified, that she’s mourning a child that she can’t even remember having. But, as expertly made as these scenes are, I found myself wishing we could just get back to Buddy and his murderous quest.

Where Buddy succeeds, thematically, is in Freddy and her friends’ journey out of the innocence of childhood and into the harsh reality of adolescence. This isn’t hammered home by Kelly or King, of course, but it can be felt every time the kids come to grips with their new reality. Rest assured though, Buddy is, first and foremost, a reliably funny comedy. The jokes may not be the most high-brow or elaborate of the year, but Kelly’s doctorate-level attention to satire is what gets the film across the finish line, even when the plot gets lost in the fuzz.

Consider the way the camera clunkily moves during the “It’s Buddy” segments, often hammering home a kid’s reaction to Buddy’s unhinged control. Or the simplistically goofy songs sung at the end of each episode which trigger the credits scroll (Kelly’s other pet fascination is goofy-but-realistically-sounding names, and Buddy provides more gloriously avenues for him to play). Similarly, Anna Kathleen’s Oscar-worthy production design goes a long way to properly skewer the programming which Buddy is aping. This feels like a plausibly calculated world produced by children’s executives in the 90s, including the puppet side characters like the Worry Well, Mr. Mailbox, Couchy, and Trashy (all voiced by Eric Bauza), Strappy the sentient backpack (voiced by Patton Oswalt), or Charlie the Train (voiced by Michael Shannon – !!!).

There are countless ways in which Buddy could have gone wrong. Look simply to a film like Ice Cream Man for a film so enamored with its simplistic premise that it forgets to heighten anything – to say nothing of this film’s dedication to analog filmmaking versus the latter’s reported use of AI. There’s a reverence for the source material to be found within Kelly’s satire, which keeps the film from feeling mean-spirited or empty. Kelly has put in the work for many years on the small screen, and Buddy feels like a long overdue announcement for a fresh voice in comedy and horror.

Roadside Attractions and Saban Films will release Buddy in theaters nationwide on August 28.

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