This Danish film, like all good movies, is real.  We get to meet characters in a real world and watch them take steps in their development as humans.  There’s love, some pain, and joy.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen in a while.

Kristoffer and his friend Geir work for an advertising company pasting posters on billboards.  They cruise around some Norwegian coastal city in a dilapidated little VW van-truck.  Like Thierry Guetta, Kristoffer is an obsessive filmer.  He carries his camera everywhere recording the antics of Geir and their reclusive roommate Stig. They make a sort of milder version of “Jackass”.

Kristoffer’s love life drives the movie, but along the side there’s drama to be found in Geir’s past and Stig’s fears.  When some tapes are discovered by a TV station, the three roommates get thrust into sudden stardom, adding an extra layer of excitement.  All along we grow to love Kristoffer for his sweetness and naivete, his broken heart and his awkwardness.  We love Geir for being a good friend and for becoming a man, and we love Stig for facing his fears and sharing his true feelings.

We love these people just as we love anybody with a good heart, and we want desperately for them to be happy.  And while we see where we want these characters to go, how we want their lives to work out, there’s nothing so elaborately developed or abnormal as to make the ending obvious.  So we sit and we watch and gradually things unravel and reach a tipping point, and then our characters step up and speak their truth and show who we’ve really known them to be all along, and everything collapses back into place in the most satisfying fashion.

I guess I don’t need much of anything in a movie besides truth.  I just want to believe that these people could exist, and I want to see them grapple with the rich experience of life.  100 minutes later, I can feel my heart stirring as the ending credits cruise by.  It won’t jump out and shock you, but “Buddy” will remind you of how perfect life is.