Netflix’s second most-watched movie right now is the buddy comedy One Of Them Days, in which best friends Dreux and Alyssa race across LA to try and get enough cash to avoid being evicted.
Starring Keke Palmer and SZA, it’s a fun ride and while it gets a bit cartoony in places, it’s a great example of why buddy comedies are such a popular genre on the best streaming services: you get action, you get adventure, you get wisecracks… in other words, you get a lot of entertainment.
There are lots of brilliant buddy movies out there, and lots of buddy comedies currently make up some of the best Netflix movies you can stream – so if you’re looking for a buddy movie to watch with your best buds, or to stream solo, I think you’ll enjoy at least two of these three.
Friday
- Where to watch: Netflix (US, UK, AU)
Ice Cube and Chris Tucker play newly unemployed Craig and his stoner pal Smokey who, one Friday in LA, suddenly need to find $200 to avoid a world of trouble. As you’d expect from an Ice Cube movie it’s got a killer soundtrack, but while some of the gags are a bit toilet humor the film itself is strong: Entertainment Weekly said that “Friday has energy, and sass, and the nerve to suggest that the line between tragedy and comedy may be in the bloodshot eye of the beholder.”
Friday was released after a slew of movies that showed South Central LA as a violent criminal hellhole, and that made it a refreshing correction: as Emanuel Levy wrote: “A new generation of Black talent (director Gray, actors Chris Tucker and Ice Cube) bring verve to this much welcome comedic view of street life in South Central, after mostly crime and drug pictures set there.”
If you’re easily offended this might not be for you; Variety was one of many publications to point out that a lot of the humor was very crude. But many more found it hilarious, including the Arizona Daily Star: The film “synthesizes blaxploitation and pot-comedy genres and melds them into a colossus of unending laughs.”
Wedding Crashers
- Where to watch: Netflix (US, UK), Prime Video (AU)
I have a rule: if it’s got Walken, it’s worth watching. And this is no exception. Walken is a hoot every time he’s on screen in this fun comedy about two men, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, whose idea of a good time is to crash strangers’ weddings to get free booze and pick up women. But then the duo crash the wedding of Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Walken)’s daughter, and plans start to go awry.
The Chicago Reader puts it plainly: “Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are enormously funny.” The Sydney Morning Herald liked it too: “It’s an easy, breezy, lanky Hollywood rom-com with a brain, for most of its running time.”
The casting is key here, because as the Bangor Daily News put it: “The film’s best element is the inspired casting of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson; their easy repartee helps to grease over the film’s shortcomings.” Isla Fisher as Walken’s daughter is particularly great: as Three Movie Buffs said, she “manages to steal every scene that she’s in.”
Me Time
- Where to watch: Netflix (US, UK, AU)
Fancy a hate-watch? Any film with a 7% Rotten Tomatoes rating begs to be watched, if only to find out why so many people hated it. This Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg movie about a bored dad who finds some “me time” when his wife and kids are away has been pelted with so many rotten tomatoes I almost feel sorry for it.
How bad can it be? The critics were almost unanimous: it’s a promising premise that’s completely wasted by the script and phoned-in performances.
Empire Magazine was not amused. The jokes are “crass” and the stunts are “hackneyed”; a rare highlight is Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, an anarchic Uber driver who’s genuinely funny. But the film itself is just chaotic. ABC News agreed. “This laugh-starved, buddy comedy is crushingly dim-witted and disposable.”
Groucho Reviews didn’t like it either. It’s “a very strange mix of family sitcom and R-rated bro-down buddy comedy. A witless string of dumb comic set pieces and an unfunny slog.” And Uproxx perhaps summed up the problem: “Me Time is an R-rated comedy about parenthood. Why do most of the jokes feel like they’re aimed at 8-year-olds?”
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