Friendship is, as Cole Porter succinctly put it, the perfect blendship. Maybe so, although margaritas and Reese’s peanut butter cups are definitely in the race. At minimum, the buddy film has long been a mainstay of cinema. Here are my picks for the all-time best male buddy pictures (my take on the best female buddy movies will be in a future installment).
10. Scarecrow (1973, dir: Jerry Schatzberg)
Scarecrow features one of Al Pacino’s greatest performances, and that’s saying something. He plays Lionel, a sweet-natured and childlike drifter, who teams up with fellow hitchhiker Max (Gene Hackman), an ill-tempered ex-con en route to Pittsburgh in hopes of opening a car wash. This road trip, shambolic and ultimately downbeat, is vintage ‘70s cinema. Its ambling rhythm lets the pair’s friendship evolve organically. Pacino and Hackman, two of their generation’s most extraordinary actors, are as good as one would expect.
9. 48 Hrs.(1982, dir: Walter Hill)
48 Hrs. catapulted Eddie Murphy from Saturday Night Live breakout performer to movie star, but don’t dismiss the reliable work here of ol’ gravel-throated Nick Nolte. Both are in fine form in what is arguably––oh, screw it, let’s not argue and just agree—the quintessential buddy cop film of the 1980s. Nolte is hardnosed San Francisco police Detective Jack Cates, who snags a 48-hour prison release for wiseass criminal Reggie Hammond (Murphy) to help track down one of Reggie’s old crew. Jack, an avowed racist, develops the requisite grudging respect for Reggie’s abilities, although the picture’s casual racism and sexism can be startling when revisited today. Hill’s direction is customarily muscular, making 48 Hrs. a solid, bone-crunching actioner.
8. The Odd Couple (1968, dir: Gene Saks)
This adaptation of Neil Simon’s Broadway smash comedy was successful enough to spawn one of the better TV sitcoms of the 1970s, with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall taking on the titular roles. For the movie version, however, Walter Matthau is pitch-perfect reprising his Broadway role as slovenly newspaper sportswriter Oscar Madison, with Jack Lemmon every bit his equal as the fastidious Felix Ungar. The character names themselves became shortcuts to describe a certain type of personality. Moreover, I’ve gotta hand it to any mainstream comedy that kicks off with an attempted suicide. In this case, the would-be suicide is a despondent Felix after his wife files for divorce. Oscar, the only divorcee who is part of Felix’s weekly poker game––special mention should be made of great character turns by Herb Edelman and John Fiedler as fellow players––takes in his chum, not realizing how poorly matched they are as roommates.
7. Diner (1982, dir: Barry Levinson)
For his directorial debut, Levinson mined his own past growing up in Baltimore of the 1950s. While I can’t vouch whether his experiences were this fun and brimming with male camaraderie, Diner makes for a wonderful hangout flick. More episodic than plot-driven, it offers a tight-knit group of friends––played by Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser and Tim Daly––uniting for a pal’s wedding (the Guttenberg character) on New Year’s Eve 1959. These are clear archetypes; Guttenberg is the rabid Colts fan, Bacon the troubled genius, Rourke the smooth operator, and so on. No matter. Levinson’s dialogue sparkles. By the way, Diner’s newlyweds are slated to honeymoon in Cuba. Interestingly, the film fails to note that the date will coincide with Fidel Castro’s armed overthrow of that country’s regime.
6. Cooley High (1975, dir: Michael Schultz)
Cooley High follows a group of teenagers growing up in the Chicago projects during the early 1960s. Schultz and screenwriter Eric Monte trade on the high jinks typical of teen exploitation flicks. A kid gets some gnarly smelling gorilla poop flung on his shirt. There are crap games in a diner, the inadvertent commandeering of a stolen car and, not least of all, the tireless quest to get laid. But what makes Cooley High great is the central relationship between Larry “Preach” Jackson (Glynn Turman) and Richard “Cochise” Morris (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs). Preach is a bespectacled writer who dreams of going to Hollywood, Cochise the high school basketball star destined for a college scholarship. The easy rapport between the pair––two of only three nonprofessionals in the ensemble cast––makes their friendship genuinely affecting.
5. Of Mice and Men (1939, dir: Lewis Milestone)
Mismatched partners are a staple of buddy comedies, but John Steinbeck understood the real pathos that can emerge from such circumstances. Milestone’s no-frills adaptation of Steinbeck’s 1937 novella stars Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. as drifters George Milton and Lennie Small. George (Meredith) is the smart one, Lennie (Chaney) the good-hearted hulk who doesn’t know his own strength. Chaney’s performance is overly broad, and you sorta wish he would shut up about those damned rabbits, but Of Mice and Men packs an undeniably emotional gut punch.
4. Withnail and I (1987, dir: Bruce Robinson)
Writer-director Robinson’s lightly autobiographical work about being a struggling actor in late 1960s’ London inexplicably flopped on its initial release. Thankfully, a second life on video rescued Withnail and I from the jaws of obscurity. The “I” of this razor-sharp comedy, Marwood (Paul McGann), is an unemployed actor who shares a Camden Town flat with equally unemployed actor Withnail (Richard E. Grant). On the heels of a 60-hour booze-and-drug bender, the dysfunctional mates set out to revive themselves with a weekend in the country. Grant is a force of nature in his movie debut––fortunately for him, Daniel Day-Lewis had passed on the role––but it certainly helped to be blessed with one of the most hilariously acerbic scripts anyone could want.
3. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, dir: George Roy Hill)
While 19th century outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker (aka Butch Cassidy) and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid) likely didn’t elicit swoons from those they robbed, Hollywood wisely chose to transform the real-life criminals into perfect specimens of masculine beauty. Directed by Hill from William Goldman’s Oscar-winning screenplay, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mainly showcases the ineffable magic that comes from being Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The movie is laidback, funny and wistfully elegiac—traits not typically associated with Westerns. Nevertheless, the camaraderie of the rogues (they even share a lover in the comely form of Katherine Ross) is squarely in keeping with the genre.
2. Midnight Run (1988, dir: Martin Brest)
Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin leaned into their respective personas in this classic buddy comedy. De Niro plays bounty hunter Jack Walsh, hired to track down Mafia accountant Jonathan “the Duke” Mardukas (Grodin), who is on the run after giving to charity $15 million he embezzled from the mob. Jack is a no-bullshit ex-cop, Jonathan a surprisingly gentle soul. Jack quickly nabs his man in New York, but the pair must dodge gangsters and the FBI on the journey back to Los Angeles where Jack is to be paid. By all accounts, Midnight Run was a difficult production. The notoriously perfectionist Brest dragged the shoot out to 100 days, an ordeal that eventually landed the exhausted director in a hospital. But the extended period together gave De Niro and Grodin time to develop palpable onscreen chemistry.
1. Sideways (2004, dir: Alexander Payne)
Miles (Paul Giamatti) is a paunchy, depressive would-be writer who disguises his alcoholism as oenophilia. Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is an introspection-free actor whose most convincing role is that of horny Lothario. In the comedy-drama Sideways, the longtime friends go on a wine-tasting tour in California’s Santa Ynez Valley to celebrate Jack’s impending wedding. Their relationship seems improbable, but then Miles lets it slip to another character that he and Jack had been thrust together as college roommates, and the unlikely friendship suddenly makes sense. This brittle and fiercely smart adaptation of Rex Pickett’s novel beautifully captures the specific dynamic of friends who have absolutely nothing in common.
Honorable mention: The Banshees of Inishiran; Da Five Bloods; Dumb and Dumber; Freebie and the Bean; Lethal Weapon; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Rio Bravo; Stand by Me; Step Brothers; Superbad
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 