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"Buddy"

 This movie begins within the world of a TV show--it's really the world of "Barney the Dinosaur." But Barney is now Buddy, and he is a unicorn.


I love when several people are forced together on a campus--and "BarneyLand" is a campus I have not seen in a movie before. The children mostly get along; there is also a talking backpack, which might be a reference to "Dora the Explorer." A nurse and mailman are on the periphery. Buddy the unicorn demands that everyone learn to dance. When one little boy refuses, Buddy commits murder, then covers up the corpse.

The story begins to feel like a comment on Harvey Weinstein. Buddy repeatedly says, "I am the one with the power, and you will believe each of my statements." One suspicious child begins to doubt his own suspicions--the world works in a certain way, and if there is evidence to the contrary, the evidence must be wrong.

We then make a jump to the real world, the actual world. Cristin Milioti is a harried executive; she has a strange feeling that she once had a third child, and the third child has disappeared. Her husband--Topher Grace--isn't sure how to respond, but the recruitment of a parapsychologist is "a bridge too far." Suddenly, Milioti is sucked *into* a TV screen. Specifically, she enters the world of Buddy the unicorn.

At this point, you may begin to note a resemblance between Milioti and "Freddy," who is Buddy's child-nemesis. And you can assemble the pieces of the puzzle.

Some critics have said, "It's a little late to mock Barney the dinosaur." But I don't see this film as a sustained comment on Barney. It's more about power and about the workings of a conspiracy. It's also about shame. When Buddy assaults Milioti, we see Milioti working hard to contend with her sense of embarrassment, which is wholly unwarranted. Milioti hasn't done anything wrong. (The subject comes up again when one of the characters has to pee outside. "I don't think I've ever peed before," he says to his friends. "You need to sing loudly--so you don't hear me.")

Finally, there is a choice I really like. Most movies begin in the Ordinary World--then move to the Enchanted World. "Buddy" is a film that starts with enchantment--then works back to the Ordinary World.

I enthusiastically recommend this movie.
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