The Creator of Too Many Cooks Explores the Horror of Children’s Television with Buddy: Review

Many years ago, there was an extreme backlash against the kids show Barney & Friends for being too cheerful and upbeat. Part of that backlash was a preponderance of jokes about the cheerful singing purple dinosaur somehow revealing a dark side, terrorizing the children trapped with him in his soundstage home. Those jokes now reach their final form with Buddy, the deranged comedy-horror hybrid directed by Casper Kelly, perhaps most famous for the viral Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks.Too Many Cooks derived much of its comedy and its horror from the perversion of wholesome TV sitcom opening credits, and that’s very much the mode Buddy also operates in. Starring Keegan-Michael Key as the voice of its titular character, the movie immediately plunges the viewer into the rigorously authentic world of a human-sized dancing and singing orange unicorn. In Buddy’s world, the mailbox talks, a Worry Well grants wishes, and children get to learn lessons about friendship and cleanliness… as long as they don’t challenge Buddy in any way.Kelly keeps us immersed in Buddy’s world from the beginning, letting multiple episodes of this series play out (complete with opening and closing credits). As...