BUDDY GAMES (2019)
Starring Josh Duhamel, Dax Shepard, Dan Bakkedahl, Nick Swardson, Kevin Dillon, James Roday, Olivia Munn, Linda Darlow, Lucie Guest, Stephen Farrelly, Jensen Ackles and Neal McDonough.
Screenplay by Josh Duhamel, Jude Weng, Bob Schwartz.
Directed by Josh Duhamel.
Distributed by Saban Films. 97 minutes. Rated R.
A couple of years ago, there was a pretty awful comedy called Tag, a “based-on-a-true-story” bore about a bunch of jerky 30-something guys who have had an ongoing tag game for decades, in which the guys would do anything to win the crown, including fighting, injuring each other, hurting innocent bystanders, and playing scatological pranks on each other. The movie was a deserved bomb, quickly forgotten – as should be.
Now, here comes Buddy Games to do the seemingly impossible (as well as incomprehensible), be a cheesier, uglier, and less funny rip off of the idea of that already terrible film. Buddy Games even blatantly steals Tag’s tag line and uses it word for word in the script: “We don’t stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing.”
Believe me, Buddy Games makes Tag look like an Oscar contender. Just the fact that several talented actors actually made this film is just depressing. Even worse, Josh Duhamel, an actor I’ve always kind of liked, not only co-stars in this ensemble, but he also co-wrote this big stinking turd and made it his directorial debut.
Talk about starting at the bottom.
And he drags some Hollywood buddies down in the muck with him. Every single character in this film is absolutely obnoxious. Granted, the bigger names (well, slightly bigger names) – Dax Shepard, Kevin Dillon, James Roday and Duhamel himself – play slightly less obnoxious characters.
Oh, they are all disgusting in their own ways, but the real heavy lifting of odiousness is done by Dan Bakkedahl (who has apparently been in Veep, but I don’t remember him, really) and Nick Swardson (one of the least funny members of Adam Sandler’s posse – and remember that includes Rob Schneider).
They all play a bunch of childhood buddies who get together every year to do a bunch of extreme games, which is really just an excuse to get drunk, make fun of each other and occasionally tea bag each other when one of them passes out. (There is a LOT of testicular humor in Buddy Games, as well as one of the guys losing his balls being a major plot point.)
I could say more about Buddy Games, but really, what’s the point? If you think a bunch of grown-assed men hitting each other in the nut sack is the height of comedy, then maybe you’ll want to give Buddy Games a shot. The rest of us should avoid it like the plague.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2020 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 30, 2020.