Buffaloed (2020)

By: Mike Ward on Tuesday, March 31

NR Running Time: 95 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Zoey Deutch should be a big star. Buffaloed only reminds us of this.

  • Cocky, brash, and a bit of a bruiser, Buffaloed is a comedy with a lot of questionable people doing a whole lot of questionable things.

  • I would think its safe to describe Buffaloed as uncompromising.

NO

  • There’s Zoey Deutch and pretty much everything else. The screenplay not only wanders off into a few too many distractions, but there isn’t much to care about when Deutch isn’t on screen.

  • Hit or miss with the laugh out loud humor, much of Buffaloed is amusing and might frustrate viewers waiting for big moments.

  • The film marginalizes potential audience by feeling too regional at times.


OUR REVIEW

Zoey Deutch is a star, and watching Buffaloed, you get the sense that one day the rest of the world will catch up to her. Still emerging as a leading actor, her latest film finds her delivering a go-for-broke, fearless comedic turn as Peg, a bruising individual who decides to get rich quick through debt collection.

Lacking a truly empathetic bone in her body, Peg is incredibly smart, but lacks the ability to get out of her own way. With a jail record latched to her name, her resourcefulness is constantly on display as she attempts to find the next way to make money, while mother Kathy (Judy Greer) cuts hair illegally in her home.

Seizing on debt collectors who try and collect from her mother, Peg decides to enter the debt collection business and scraps together a makeshift organization consisting of people with questionable backgrounds and morals, but who share in the enthusiasm of inventing new ways to make money. She becomes an immediate enemy to Wizz (Jai Courtenay) – first, from the inside as an employee and then as a competitor.

Once Peg figures out how to profit in her new profession, her intellect kicks in and she starts making tremendous money. She blurs the lines of personal and professional with a lawyer (Jermaine Fowler), who is smitten with Peg’s rambunctious nature, as Peg becomes addicted to the most lucrative venture of her life. But is it legal?

Director Tanya Wexler’s fourth feature places a lot of Buffaloed on Deutch’s ample shoulders. Her energy dictates much of the ebb and flow of the film and the screenplay by Brian Sacca seems to be, at times, little more than a vehicle to set up situations where Deutch can riff and vibe with actors on screen. The energy is palpable, the story becomes rather rudimentary the longer the film goes.

The references to Buffalo, New York throughout the film may please a hometown, or even regional audience, but several in-jokes and references increasingly fall flat. One example: a judge likes to make decisions based on someone’s favorite place to get wings in the city.

The film is saddled with voiceover (a crutch so many movies rely on unnecessarily), and when the domestic squabbles envelope the characters, you find the film has been so focused on Peg, you don’t quite care about the other characters’ issues all that much. In the film’s last act, I really just wondered how all of this was going to end.

Deutch does all she can to save Buffaloed and succeeds in pushing it across the finish line. You just wish she wasn’t doing so much heavy lifting.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Zoey Deutch, Jai Courtney, Judy Greer, Jermaine Fowler, Noah Reid, Lusia Strus, Lorrie Odom, Raymond Ablack, Nicholas Carella.

Director: Tanya Wexler
Written by: Brian Sacca
Release Date: February 14, 2020
Magnolia Pictures