Keegan-Michael Key

In Buddy (2026), the unicorn keeps sounding reassuring when his behaviour gives us every reason to be alarmed. Keegan-Michael Key supplies the voice, Sergey Zhuravsky the performance inside the suit, and together they keep the mascot recognisable as a creature from children's television. We laughed because Key never let Buddy's violence dislodge that insistently friendly manner. Casper Kelly's film is unevenly paced, but it gives Key a better comic task than simply talking faster or louder.

His sketch work, from MADtv, which he joined in 2004, to Key & Peele (2012–2015) with Jordan Peele, depended on heightened characters and impressions. Film and voice roles became a larger part of his work from the mid-2010s; he voiced Ducky alongside Peele in Toy Story 4 (2019). That move has brought too many parts in which an exaggerated voice is almost all he is given to work with.

Josh Cooley's Transformers One (2024) makes better use of his chatter. Key's B-127 has been alone so long that he holds conversations with scrap, which gives all that talking a reason beyond filling a quiet moment. He wore us out before he made us laugh, but the loneliness gives the delivery something specific to tell us about him.

Toad gets less help in the Mario film from 2023, where Key's cheerfulness amounts to noise. In the 2026 sequel, he talks fast in a film that will barely hold a shot long enough for a joke. Paul King's Wonka (2023) finds a different way to waste him: its Chief of Police accepts chocolate bribes and grows fatter beneath successive prosthetic suits. The joke is cheap and repeated past usefulness, and Mark Everson's brisk editing cannot solve a film already crowded with competing plot strands. For Key with something stranger to do, choose Buddy, provided uneven pacing and a murderous mascot do not put you off.