Buddy

For everyone who thought that Barney the Big Purple Dinosaur was the Antichrist, the feature debut of Casper Kelly (director of the 2014 viral sensation Too Many Cooks) should be very reassuring. Set in the world of a terrible '90s kids' show starring a big, plush, orange, anthropomorphic talking unicorn with magical powers who teaches life lessons through God-awful songs but isn't what he appears to be, the picture is delightfully unhinged but not developed enough to sustain its 96-minute running time. In fact, by the halfway point I felt like I'd been trapped in a time loop where I had to watch the same joke for several hours.

The movie has a lot of wonderful detail, and terrific performances from the child actors and the voice talent. There's also one insufferable live-action performance from Topher Grace; the movie grinds to a halt as we're forced to watch his one-dimensional character dismiss his wife (Cristin Milioti) when she develops a sense that something is not right with her family. The movie never recovers from this switch out of the TV show world, and even when we're quickly brought back in, and the narrative has a bit more development, we can see the titular Buddy is just as one-note as Topher was. It's a funny note, for sure, but it doesn't build in terms of laughs (or scares, for that matter). For a film trying to be like nothing we've seen before, it feels almost derivative of its fellow 2026 releases, The End of Oak Street and Backrooms. Watching it, you kinda wish you were revisiting one of those movies instead.