'Buddy' Reviews Are In: See What Critics Are Saying About the Childrens' TV Show-Themed Horror Movie | Just Jared - Celebrity News and Gossip

Buddy is about to hit theaters, and the first reviews are in!

What is Buddy about?

Here’s the synopsis: “Remember BUDDY—the bright orange unicorn and star of that classic childrens’ television show who brought joy and life lessons into your living room? Inside the colorful world of It’s Buddy!, a group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness. But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world.”

Who stars in Buddy?

The Casper Kelly-directed movie stars Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn and Topher Grace, and hits theaters Friday (August 28).

Fans are eagerly anticipating the mysterious movie, and the first reviews are starting to surface online. Are people loving the film?

Watch the trailer…

Buddy currently has an 85% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Slant gave it 2.5 out of 4, writing: “Casper Kelly and company have meticulously recreated the look of ’90s kids’ television in all its vibrant, plasticky, narrow aspect-ratioed glory.”

San Francisco Chronicle gave it 3 out of 4: “Kelly does a great job of incrementally and inexorably building up Buddy’s menace in the film’s first act.”

AV Club gives it a B+, writing: “Kelly recreates the look of these shows right down to their transition wipes and hip hop-lite choreography, but his darkest scares come from how someone who’s not-so-nice gets away with bullying.”

Slate says: “The movie’s hilarious and unsettling disjunctions come from the way it introduces genuine menace into Buddy’s world without needing to rewrite its rules, because the menace was already bubbling just under the surface.”

RogerEbert.com says: “A delightfully bleak, but mostly missed opportunity.”

TheWrap says: “Each time you think you’re seeing the daylight of something potentially better to explore on the horizon, Buddy keeps dragging you back into the banal darkness. Like the kids, you deserve far better than whatever this lackluster production amounts to.”

Bloody Disgusting gave it 3.5 out of 5, writing: “Casper Kelly continues his explorations of pop culture insanity, this time with an engaging and energetic descent into puppet-induced madness. While its satire is never quite that deep, Buddy‘s foremost aim is to entertain. It certainly succeeds.”

Variety adds: “Casper Kelly is a talent to watch. In Buddy, he’s essentially reviving an old joke and doing multiple variations on it. But he has a gleefully rich understanding of the inner insanity that can drive pop culture.”

THR says: “Genre audiences willing to settle for some weird-a– but ultimately toothless subversiveness might enjoy Buddy… But the movie is a one-joke premise, cute and colorful but unsatisfyingly fleshed out.”

The New York Post gave it 2.5 out of 4, saying: “The first 20 minutes were side-splittingly funny and bitingly observed… Then a more ambitious story involving parents in the outside world, played by Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace, takes over, and the movie struggles to match its rocket-fuel kickoff.”

The Daily Beast adds: “A horror-comedy that takes a scalpel—or, more accurately, several weapons—to its jaunty protagonist, all while reveling in his darkly disturbed spirit.”

IndieWire gave it a B+, noting: ‘It gets harder and harder to find something that feels fresh enough to be truly shocking and executed competently enough to transcend its gimmicks, and we should all celebrate when we find one.”

The Guardian gave it 2 out of 5, concluding: “With the poor child actors forced to stay in well-observed yet progressively grating Nickelodeon schtick, it’s hard to feel all that bothered about their survival.”

Check out more reviews for recent movie releases right here.

Posted To:Buddy Movies Reviews