Buddy Games (2019)

Buddy Games review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

After so many frat comedies of manchildren getting into slapstick stupidity, Buddy Games is...another one. A collective of manchildren miss those days of hard-drinking and grabbing each other by their genitals that they decide to relive those days. Only then do they learn the true lesson of the film: you’re never too old to do stupid frat stuff.

The central story focuses on a collective of friends that get together after many years. The more-or-less leader of their old college group is Bob (Josh Duhamel), referred to as the Bobfather. Bob’s special contribution to his friends was the Buddy Games. The games are a series of challenges all meant to evoke a sense of friendship through intense physical and mental competitions. In other words, they replicated Jackass.

The games are just for fun and shoved into the script because tough times call for fun times. Dax Shephard, Kevin Dillon, and James Roday Rodriguez are all players in the games who do little more than take the blows and make the expected low-brow banter. And about half-way through, it donned on me. This isn’t Jackass; this is Grown-Ups. If Grown-Ups seemed far too friendly an Adam Sandler vehicle, Buddy Games is essentially the same film of over-the-hill friends trying to have fun again in the most simplistic and embarrassing of ways.

I suppose I should mention that this is Josh Duhamel’s directorial debut but I’m reluctant to bring it up because it showcases how simple an aim Duhamel has for comedy. This doesn’t feel like a surprise of a first film and more of a paycheck-film that is doomed to the bargain bin at a Walmart. It’s not that a frat comedy can’t have some heart and spirit but so little of that is present in this film. More effort has been put into the pranks and games which involve everything from drinking to eating to paintball to archery. And as if all that wasn’t par for the course, Nick Swardson shows up to do his same old bit of saying and doing gross things, as he does in every comedy with lukewarm results.

It’s hard to muster much of any emotion for such a film. It just sort of does what it advertises are never veers off course, ticking all the boxes for a raunchy comedy. I can’t be angry at the actors for trying their best to make the pranks and stunts funny but I’m not exactly amused at their tiring attempts. I can’t be offended for its vulgarity either but I’m not invested in the film’s flat attempts at sincerity. I just feel nothing for this sort of film. Perhaps if I drank as much hard liquor as the participants I might be able to enjoy that spectacle of it all. But as it stands, Buddy Games doesn’t come recommended sober and I’m not willing to test just how much whiskey is required to find it funny.