BUDDY BOT (2021)

BUDDY BOT (2021)

Tagline: Nope.

(Sci-Fi, Comedy, Tiny Robot) [Short]

Let’s play…the runaway game. 

In this one, Adam, Hope’s son is brought home by the cops. She is gone a lot so he’s just kind of becoming a juvenile delinquent. She is leaving him at the house for 24 hours with a “Buddy Bot” which is a tiny robot from the Pediatric Ward intended to watch over Adam like an electronic babysitter so to speak. Adam is a teen, so he is immediately insulted. It takes a while for Adam to embrace the Buddy Bot, but a turn of events leads Buddy into a psychotic rage forcing Adam to rethink his priorities. 

First off, there are some cool ideas in this, but I am not sure how practical they are. There is an iPad-type situation going on when it comes to Adam’s chore list on the fridge. Maybe in a future where you have a “Buddy Bot” that doesn’t need to charge, you also have an iPad-type thing that doesn’t need to charge. There are only 2 actors in this movie aside from the person doing the voice of “Buddy Bot”. Brady Jacob plays Adam and does a pretty solid job. At this point, he is mostly known for shorts and a TV series. One of the shorts was another sci-fi outing called PURPLE EYES. Tanya Raisa plays Hope and gets minimal screen time, but does a good job. I haven’t seen any of her other films or shorts. They did her a disservice in her main scene with her opening statement, but outside of that, it’s fine. 

The CGI in this is really well done for a short. There are a few spots where Buddy jumps, that look like they weren't as smooth as they could have been. We even see a drone at the beginning trying to find a place to drop off its pizza. I actually used a similar idea for notes on a possible 4th issue of my DARK 30 comic someday. That story is tentatively titled THE WOOD BEASTS VS. THE CHAINSAW CHOIR. Opening scene- Encrypted is ordering pizza in the “drone zone”. He tells the pizza order taker to make sure they hide the fact that they are putting pineapple on his pizza because the drones in his neighborhood will blast his house off the map if they find out. Because he couldn’t afford to live in a zone where that’s allowed. Anyway, I love the design work in this thing. It has a RON’S GONE WRONG feel to it. 

I do like this one, but Adam’s confrontation with Buddy is kind of lackluster and we don’t really get a lot of character development that explains the emotionally soft ending. The very end though is cute and overall I think for a short this thing works in a lot of satisfying elements. This thing is also 15 minutes long which is kind of long for a “short”, but it doesn’t feel like it’s even that long. The pacing is really good and there aren’t any scenes that felt like they didn’t need to be there. 

Overall the message here really isn’t delivered to the extent it could have been. I think MOM VS. MACHINE did a better job in this area, but it’s still a lot of fun and to be honest there are not a lot of sci-fi shorts that fall into the category of “fun” when you look at the amount of stuff that is out there. I always say this, but most sci-fi is loaded with serious downers. BUDDY BOT is not that.

I give this one a 4 out of 7. There are a few things I think that might have helped this thing out. 

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