Spooky Buddies

Given that the Air Buddies series has been responsible for such worthless releases as 2008’s Snow Buddies and 2009’s Santa Buddies, it’s not especially surprising to note that Spooky Buddies boasts the feel of a lazy, consistently unwatchable bit of kid-oriented filmmaking – with the movie ultimately establishing itself as the absolute nadir of this epically terrible franchise. The movie follows the Buddies, B-Dawg (Skyler Gisondo), Budderball (Nico Ghisi), Buddha (Charles Henry Wyson), Mudbud (Ty Panitz), and Rosebud (G. Hannelius), as they attempt to prevent a diabolical warlock (Harland Williams’ Warwick) and an evil creature known as the Howlloween Hound from taking over the world, with their efforts eventually assisted by a ragtag group of scrappy kids and the spirit of a puppy that was murdered decades earlier. It’s clear right from the get-go that filmmaker Robert Vince, working from a script cowritten with Anna McRoberts, has absolutely no interest in capturing the interest (or changing the mindset) of the series’ detractors, as Spooky Buddies has been infused with as aggressively a juvenile sensibility as one might have expected – with the film’s pervasively infant-oriented sensibilities compounded by its complete and total lack of even partially developed supporting characters. And while it’s certainly possible that small, dimwitted children will enjoy the over-the-top antics of the protagonists (eg one of the Buddies dispatches a villain by farting in his face), Spooky Buddies will, for the majority of viewers, come off as an absolutely interminable experience that leaves this unstoppable franchise with nowhere to go but up. (One can only hope, anyway.)

no stars out of ****