Buddy

Buddy is a movie that offers a good mix of laughter, friendship, and romance, with a dash of drama.

Compared to a fictive Hollywood version of this flick, its tone definitively much more nuanced. At first the two best friends start as very emotionally immature young men, but without exaggeration. Every character evolves, but sensibly. There are romantic gestures, but nothing over the top. The only thing to muddle those calm waters is at the very end. In real life nobody would do that, but it's easy to excuse it given the quality of the overall performance.

The scenario is nothing new, yet interesting enough with a wide variety elements combined in a pretty homogeneous fashion. You'll have a pleasant evening watching this film.

Buddy (2003)

A quirky low budget film with a strain of realism holding its absurdity together. There are some implausible twists of plot, and a general feeling that it could have been both more poignant and more tightly edited. But it is most of all very sweet, and because of that it's touching and a nice film, something to watch with expectations in check.

The key here is really the straight forward storytelling style, the ordinary camera-work, the feeling that contemporary Norway looks and feels a bit like this. There is a sadness to a lot of it that seems forced and yet is moving. The romantic encounters are believable and just wrong and awkward enough to remind us of what it was like to be 20-something and completely tossed around in relationships.

In fact, the best of this movie--two or three of the leading actors, for starters--is so good and natural you only wish it had the rest of its act in order. But then, if you make it to the end, you'll either smile or cry because you'll be a bit attached to the actors by then. Fun.

As the summary says, this film starts out a bit slowly but it is important that you stick with it since the movie is excellent overall. The story is about a working-class guy, Kristoffer and his relationships. While Kristoffer is wrapped up in relationships with two women (which he balances VERY poorly), his interaction with his two room mates (Geir and Stig Inge) were the most interesting aspect of the film to me.

It seems that the little video clips Kristoffer has been making with his pocket video camera have accidentally fallen into the hands of a Norwegian TV producer. Some of them are akin to stunts from the American show, "Jackass", while others are just day to day activities the three men are involved in as they are room mates. Oddly, when they are shown on TV, the three become instant small-time celebrities and instead of life getting better for the guys, things get much worse and quite strained.

While the plot is a bit easy to predict in some places (particularly regarding Kristoffer's girlfriends), the predictability isn't a serious detriment because it's such a nice and quirky sort of film--the sort you'll only see in foreign and independent films. Plus, there are enough surprises and good acting that the overall effort is very pleasant to watch and well worth a look. While not a perfect film, this does demonstrate that good stuff is coming out of Norway and I loved the relationship that blossoms between Kristoffer and Stig Inge.

I ordered this movie on Netflix, when i was looking through the foreign section. I didn't really know what it was about but i was willing to give it a chance. I ended up digging it and thinking that it is a pretty cool story of friendship and adversity that you go through with real friends. Then i realized that i recognized one of the characters, the one named Geir. i realized that i had seen another one of his movies (from Netflix), about a week earlier called UNO. I would recommned this movie because it is not too heavy but yet you are invested in the story and the characters and want to see how everything ends up. Anyway, i hope this helps.

Warm, humorous, boisterous, sensitive, naive and yes, maybe a little cliched, Buddy is a thoroughly enjoyable and fun film. I would highly recommend it.

If I'm honest, it wasn't a million miles from being yet another 'quirky' American teen feel-good film (American pie meets Jackass with a Graduate ending)... but, it would take a very cold and cynical heart not to warm to its eager and honest portrayal of wide eyed and bushy tailed Nowegian youth.

Despite some of the clumsy and obvious manipulations, it's got its heart in the right place... and if that's good enough for Stig, that's good enough for me.