Best Buddy Films

The buddy film is the genre whose central dramatic relationship is non-romantic friendship between two leads. The form is older than cinema (the buddy pairing exists in literature and theatre going back to antiquity) but is one of mainstream cinema's most-reliable categories. The films on this list are the ones that earned their pairings rather than treating the buddy structure as commercial template.

Our picks.

The classic male-pairing tradition

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) — George Roy Hill. Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The canonical buddy western.
• Midnight Cowboy (1969) — John Schlesinger. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. Best Picture.
• Sideways (2004) — Alexander Payne. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church across a wine-tasting weekend.
• The Big Lebowski (1998) — Coens. The Dude and Walter.
• Lethal Weapon (1987) — Richard Donner. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The buddy-cop template.
• 48 Hrs. (1982) — Walter Hill. Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte.

The female-pairing entries

• Thelma & Louise (1991) — Ridley Scott. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.
• Frances Ha (2012) — Noah Baumbach. Greta Gerwig and Mickey Sumner.
• The Heat (2013) — Paul Feig. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.
• Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) — David Mirkin. Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino.

The cross-genre extensions

• Stand By Me (1986) — Rob Reiner. Four boys, not strictly a buddy film but structurally connected.
• Thelma & Louise (1991) — Already listed but worth re-emphasising for the genre-defining female pairing.
• Dazed and Confused (1993) — Linklater. Multiple buddies across one night.

What separates the form

Buddy films succeed when the central friendship is dramatically substantial rather than logistically convenient. The pair's specific differences should produce the film's central tension; the pair's specific similarities should produce the film's emotional substance. Butch and Sundance work because their temperaments differ in specific ways that the film's plot dramatises. Thelma and Louise work because the journey progressively reveals their different orientations to the patriarchal world they are escaping. The Dude and Walter work because their separate relationships to American masculinity produce the film's specific comic register.

The films that fail at the form treat the buddy structure as scaffolding for unrelated material. The pair is reduced to two-cop-archetype convention; the differences are surface; the friendship is asserted rather than dramatised. The films on this list mostly avoid this trap.