Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Buddy Games’ on VOD, an Offensive Yukfest Directed by and Starring Josh Duhamel

Now on VOD, Buddy Games is the first film ever written and directed by Josh Duhamel, and it is indeed an audacious debut. It’s a theoretical comedy that was filmed in 2017 and now emerges as a product of the pandemic cinematic dumping grounds, possibly because there hasn’t been enough testicle-centric humor to brighten the hellscape we’re in. So we proceed with caution to determine whether this men-behaving-badly arrested-development movie makes The Hangover look like Lawrence of Arabia.

BUDDY GAMES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: For many years, six old pals have gathered annually to “ruthlessly demoralize” each other via ridiculous competitions. We see Shelly (Dan Bakkedahl) ambush Bender (Nick Swardson) and pelt him with paintballs until he welts up, taking the Buddy Games championship yet again. The other participating dipshits are Bob (Duhamel), Durfy (Dax Shepard), Doc (Kevin Dillon) and Zane (James Roday Rodriguez). Durfy tries to pick up a female by telling her he operates a backhoe for a living, digging cesspools and sewer mains, so one assumes he also wrote this screenplay. Sloshed as eff, Shelly assaults a sleeping partier by dragging his sweaty gonads across his face multiple times. Bender sees a golden opportunity for revenge, so he grabs a paintball gun and bullseyes Shelly’s dangly boys, seriously injuring him.

FIVE YEARS LATER. The Buddy Games are kaputskies. As the writer and director of the movie, Duhamel plays a character who, during that half-decade, became a hundred-millionaire who lives in a house that looks like 25 bed-and-breakfasts and has been dating Olivia Munn, who bakes pies in peekaboo skirts. The rest of the dudes are all pathetic in one way or another — Doc is a lousy chiropractor, Durfy is a struggling actor and Zane is probably gay, which a braindead and tasteless movie like this insists is a horrible thing.

Which leads us to Shelly. He’s suicidal. He lost one ball in the incident. The second one followed it like a lemming. He has no balls no more. Bob catches up with him in a rehab center, snorting crushed-up Smarties. Y’know what’d perk him up? Resurrecting the Buddy Games, of course. But on one condition: Bender can’t participate. Blood’s too bad between ’em. Bender has been living in a van, and when Bob lies to him that he needs to throw $10,000 in the pot to participate in the Games, Bender pimps himself out to horny old ladies and suchlike, frantically scraping together cold nickels and soggy singles wherever he can.

The weekend of the new Games, Bender shows up and Shelly isn’t happy. So Bob smooths things over by coughing up $150,000 for the prize pot. They go to work, battling in remedial American Gladiator competitions, hitting the dance floor with a gutful of laxatives, deep-throating corn dogs, drinking jizz cocktails ’til their pants fall down, etc. Who will win? And will all these longtime friendships endure all this unwavering moronitude? I don’t know, nor did I ever care. Whether you’ll survive it is the most relevant question.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Buddy Games is Jackass meets Grown Ups meets Tag meets I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell meets the murder slide from Class Action Park during its less homicidal moments. You’ll wish it was more homicidal.

Performance Worth Watching: Olivia Munn takes a swing at injecting a little charm into the proceedings, but it’s one teensy dandelion growing on a giant mountain of moldering pangolin dung.

Memorable Dialogue: Bender: “I wouldn’t shoot a man in the balls! I love balls! I have two of them!”

Sex and Skin: Full-frontal male yuck; an older woman reverse-cowgirls Bender; scrotums scrotums scrotums scrotums.

Our Take: Buddy Games is sexist, homophobic and desperate for a laugh. It never gets one. It assumes that oatmeal-brained white guys acting like petulant, territorial, drunken apes is hilarious; it also assumes Swardson’s presence is automatically funny. It is wrong on both fronts. I was shocked to learn it isn’t a Happy Madison product; rather, it’s a WWE Studios thing, but without the relative dramatic subtlety of Monday Night Raw. Watching this movie is the equivalent of your buddy running a marathon then shoving your face in his taint, I assume. It’s pretty unpleasant. The movie, I mean. The other thing hasn’t happened to me yet, but I hope it doesn’t, because it sure seems not great. However, this movie happened to me, and all I can say is, I hope it doesn’t happen to you.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Occasionally, reviewing a movie is a humanitarian exercise. This is one of those times.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Buddy Games