Because "free" and "easy to access" are both powerful motivators to me when watching movies, it takes will power not to watch all of these movies. But it's will power I take pride in exercising.
And the easiest place to cut fat, in terms of return on the time I'm investing watching these movies, is with buddy action comedies. The streamers are lousy with those at the moment, probably beause they continue to make the algorithm happy.
But you can't skip all the buddy action comedies. So which do you watch and which don't you watch?
One easy opt-in is how early it comes out in the year. At the start of the year, I'm desperate for new content as long as it has that year's release date on it. In fact, the very first movie I watched in 2025 -- that counted for 2025, I should say -- was the Jamie Foxx-Cameron Diaz buddy action comedy Back in Action.
Had Back in Action come out in September, I might have skipped it. Though I find both Foxx and Diaz appealing, so it might have made the cut.
But January? To get my 2025 list started? It was a no doubter.
A buddy action comedy released later in the year, when I have plenty to choose from, really has to hit all of my personal four quadrants in order to make it before my eyeballs. (I don't actually have a "personal four quadrants," I'm just trying to repurpose some industryspeak to make my point.) So last year, when the Mark Wahlberg-Halle Berry buddy action comedy The Union came out on August 16th, it didn't stand much of a chance.
That said, my feelings toward the Foxx-Diaz duo and the Wahlberg-Berry duo are pretty similiar, so maybe The Union makes a real-life test case for the hypothetical later releasing of Back in Action. Anyway, yeah, I skipped The Union. And now that I didn't see it in the year it came out, where it at least had the justification of being rankings fodder, there's probably little reason for me to ever see it.
But release date is not the only factor here. I'm also looking at whether the premise of these movies has a "certain something" that potentially makes them stand out from the pack. And it doesn't take a lot, just a whiff of what looks like inspiration. Which brings us to another Mark Wahlberg vehicle, which I am also skipping.
I've had the ability to watch Amazon Prime's Play Dirty for the entire time I've been back from Europe, as it was released only a few days before our trip ended. But I am snubbing it and expect to continue snubbing it, unless I find myself in some weird circumstance where it's the only thing available to me.
Why? Well perhaps it's this logline, courtesy of IMDB:
"A ruthless thief and his expert crew stumble onto the heist of a lifetime."
Yawn. Boring.
Meanwhile, a movie with a similar title and similar prospects of actually being good was released six weeks later into the year, also on Amazon Prime, meaning it was probably six weeks less likely for me to actually watch. Though watch Playdate I did this past weekend, on the second day of its availability, perhaps due to this logline, also courtesy of IMDB:
"Brian has just been fired from his job. He becomes a stay-at-home dad. He accepts a playdate invitation from another stay-at-home dad who turns out to be a loose cannon."
Although the actual writing in that logline leaves something to be desired -- and to be honest, I've only just now read it for the first time -- it does point to the fact that there's a sort of interesting idea here. The buddy action comedy stuff will grow out of a playdate gone pear-shaped, which is at least not a scenario I've ever seen in a movie, and has the potential to be funny.
Now I should note that Kevin James and Alan Ritchson, the stars of Playdate, have a significant disadvantage next to Wahlberg and Lakeith Stanfield, the latter of whom I particularly like. If I were going only on the extent to which I find the stars compelling, Play Dirty would easily beat out Playdate. But the premise of one has that "certain something" while the premise of the other makes me yawn, so that is the deciding factor in this case. (And I've already gotten plenty of Lakeith Stanfield, who appears in both Roofman and Die My Love, in 2025.)
While we're on the topic of James, I'm actually putting his other 2025 film in the "skip" category, though I don't know if it profiles as a buddy action comedy in the same way. It certainly profiles as streamer fodder that the algorithm has willed into existence. That film is Guns Up, which co-stars Christina Ricci, though it doesn't sound like a buddy action comedy in this case:
"On the brink of leaving 'The Family,' a mob henchman's final job goes off the rails. With the clock ticking, the ex-cop has one night to get his unsuspecting family out of the city before he gets snuffed out."
Yawn. Boring.
And that one's not even grammatically correct. The mob henchman's final job is on the bring of leaving The Family?
Unfortunately, the Playdate vs. Play Dirty choice, assuming the artificial scenario that I could choose only one of them, was made poorly. I can't comment on Play Dirty of course, but I can tell you that I thought Playdate was terrible, even though Ritchson tried pretty hard to make it better than that. James did not try very hard.
But anyone who thinks there won't be enough buddy action comedies that debuted on streamers in my 2025 rankings, don't you worry your pretty little head. In addition to Back in Action and Playdate, we have:
- Heads of State, starring John Cena and Idris Elba, which debuted on Amazon Prime on July 2nd
- The Pickup, starring Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson, which debuted on Amazon Prime on August 6th
- It would have been nice if there were a third one, but I guess that's it
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