Buddy Review
by Scott Renshaw (srenshaw AT leland DOT stanford DOT edu)June 13th, 1997
BUDDY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Columbia)
Starring: Rene Russo, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming.
Screenplay: Caroline Thompson, based on the memoir by Gertrude Lintz. Producers: Steve Nicolaides and Fred Fuchs.
Director: Caroline Thompson.
MPAA Rating: PG (intense situations)
Running Time: 84 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
BUDDY is being marketed as a light-hearted family frolic, but let's face facts: it's a psychological drama. That places it in pretty good company, of course; plenty of classic children's tales have been about as likely to traumatize as they were to entertain. The problem is that writer/director Caroline Thompson never finds a balance between the two. The first half of her story, based on the memoir of a real-life 1920s and 30s socialite named Trudy Lintz (Rene Russo), introduces us to Trudy as an eccentric dog breeder and animal lover whose menagerie includes horses, birds, raccoons, and a pair of high-spirited chimps. For the first half of the film, we basically see Trudy, her husband Bill (Robbie Coltrane) and her staff dealing with the trouble-making antics of the animals. Admittedly, those slapstick scenes are amusing in a circus sort of way. Sometimes, it's just entertaining to watch chimps behaving like human beings, as opposed to what you usually see in Hollywood film-making, which is vice-versa.
Unfortunately, BUDDY isn't really about Trudy and her chimps. It's about Trudy and the titular character, an orphaned gorilla she raises from infancy and brings into her household. The conflict in the story comes when little Buddy becomes great big Buddy, and his ape priori need to rumble in the jungle clashes with civilization. Soon Buddy takes on the characteristics of his proverbial 800-pound counterpart, including running amok at an exposition, injuring Trudy when she startles him, and trashing the Lintz estate in a fit of simian pique. The resulting scenes are often surprisingly intense, with the friendly Buddy the kids have grown to know and love becoming a raging, tortured soul. Scenes used in advertising, including clownish shots of Buddy breaking furniture and carrying serving trays, would lead parents and kids to expect a goofy charmer, not the reverse-ELEPHANT MAN which might have shouted "I am not a human being! I am an animal!" if the guy in the gorilla suit had been allowed to speak.
It's laudable that Thompson wants to provide a moral to her story. There's just no consistency to that moral. Thompson plays with the idea that Trudy grows and learns a lesson; if so, it's a fairly shallow one. Her actions at the film's conclusion suggest not that she's learned not to treat animals like humans, but not to treat this _particular_ animal like a human. Rene Russo thankfully doesn't play Trudy with over-the-top quirkiness, but her performance is characterized by a static benevolence. Thompson doesn't seem to realize that Trudy Lintz is like Victor Frankenstein, convinced that everything will work out fine _next_ time as long as he gets a normal brain.
BUDDY is one half of a pleasant, if innocuous, parade of cuddly critters and their tricks. That's before Kong goes on the rampage, and the fun of BUDDY is lost in a succession of dark moments which find one of our heroes frequently on the verge of crushing the other. Caroline Thompson has been a part of several other films which provided family fantasy without banality (THE SECRET GARDEN, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS), so you know she could have handled herself. In this case, she simply shifts from cute to creepy with an unpleasant suddenness. Parents beware: this gorilla's got some teeth.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bruising Buddies: 4.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
