Buddy Games is a 2019 comedy directed by Josh Duhamel in his solo directorial debut and written by Duhamel, Bob Schwartz, and Jude Weng. The film centers on a group of six friends that reunite after a five-year hiatus to engage in a challenging set of dares and games to try and help lift one of their own out of depression, and also have a chance of winning $150,000 while doing so. The cast includes Duhamel, Dax Shepard, Olivia Munn, Kevin Dillon, and Neal McDonough.

The project was originally announced in June 2017 as a deal with WWE Studios. The film held its world premiere at the 2019 Mammoth Film Festival (the what?!) where Saban Films acquired distribution rights.

The Good

Buddy Games works at times as a raunchy, you guessed it, buddy comedy. It can be fun to watch the guys get together to let loose and essentially act like they are back in college without a worry in the world. It made me wish my group of friends had an awesome lake house we went to every few years. Life goals, I suppose. It can be one testicles or penis joke after another, so be mindful of that.

This is also the closest I have gotten to Kevin Dillon playing his “Johnny Drama” role from HBO’s entourage, man I miss that show.

The Bad

I mean, where do I start? I guess the acting is as good a place as any because the cast is actually pretty good. For about 80% of the movie the acting feels forced, and it didn’t matter whether it was Josh Duhamel or Olivia Munn. From the opening scenes I was thinking to myself “what the fu**?!”, like these are actually decent actors. This is what stuck out to me the most from the start and even though it got better, it was still a huge black mark on the movie itself.

I mean the plot is painfully stupid with flat characters you really couldn’t care less about, and even though it redeems itself at times with raunchy humor, the creativity is non-existent. I really, really, really hope this is not a sign of things to come for Duhamel as a director because man, that would not be good.

The Verdict

A fairly easy watch that should generate at least a few cheap laughs, Buddy Games is ultimately a lazy directorial debut for Josh Duhamel wasting a talented comedic cast. It wanted so badly to be Jackass meets Tag, but it finds itself floundering in the discount bin at Wal-Mart instead. You could throw it on in the background while doing other things to try and enjoy its hot and cold raunchy comedy qualities which do improve as the film moves along, but that’s about it.