by Bruno Somerset

Created on: January 16, 2008   Last Updated: January 18, 2008

Everyone loves a good buddy-film. From Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, great chemistry between two characters has always translated into an entertaining film.

Several factors go into the making of a great buddy film, and gender is not as critical as it might seem; it can be a relationship between two men, two women, or if handled properly a man and a woman. But there must be a bond, a chemistry that either exists from the beginning or develops throughout the course of the film. Some movies set out to be "buddy pictures" (The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men), but the best develop as a natural result of the interaction between the actors. And whether intentional or not, the best buddy films have a fair amount of humor, even in the most serious circumstances.

Here is my list of the top five buddy films:

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Besides being one of the greatest movies of all time (Western or otherwise), this classic tale of two outlaws is the standard by which all buddy films should be judged. Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) are opposites in nearly every way, and they bicker throughout the film like an old married couple. But they stick by each other through thick and thin, right up to the bloody end, and reel off some of the wittiest dialogue ever written. They only did one other film together (The Sting), but nearly forty years after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released, it's impossible to think of Newman without immediately thinking of Redford, and vice versa.

2. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Director John Huston tried for twenty years to get this film made, and considered several pairings of actors that would have made it a good buddy film (Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and even Redford and Newman following the success of Butch Cassidy). In the end, it is doubtful that any of these could have done the job as well as Sean Connery and Michael Caine, who had both tremendous chemistry together and the ability to play convincing Englishmen, being, well, Englishmen. Through the film Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) and Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) move from friends and comrades-in-arms to not-quite enemies to friends again. Not quite a British Butch Cassidy, but darn close.

3. Lethal Weapon (1987)
Definitely the best interaction between two characters since The Man Who Would Be King, with chemistry so good they made three sequels. Mel Gibson's self-destructive

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