BUFFET INFINITY
Starring: Kevin Singh, Claire Theobold, and Donovan Workun
Director: Simon Glassman
This film has been reviewed by Quentin, Bode, and Nick as part of Bitesize Breakdown's coverage of the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival.
NICK
Harkening back to the days before streaming services, Buffet Infinity does the channel surfing for you. The parade of low budget television ads are entertaining at first but eventually become quite repetitive - outside of the battle for ad space between Buffet Infinity and Jenny’s Sandwich Shop. While I respect the craftsmanship and the difficulty in putting this all together, it just didn’t need to have a feature runtime. The original idea came from a YouTube skit and turning this into a 20-or-so minute short would have been the ideal way to expand it.
QUENTIN
I respect artists who have an experimental vision and the dedication to see it through. That is where my praise for director Simon Glassman’s Buffet Infinity ends. FYI, this isn’t a movie in the traditional sense. Sure, it’s 99 minutes long, but it’s composed entirely of cheap local commercials that mostly run under a minute. Given that approach, it quickly becomes incredibly tedious and repetitive because there aren’t any characters or story to invest in. Glassman created Infinity Buffet as a 30-second YouTube clip at the beginning of COVID, and it definitely feels like the out-of-control creation of someone trying to hold it together during lockdown.
BODE
I believe that a movie should be however long as the filmmaker wants it to be. But there’s just no denying whenever you feel a film is overlong, and Simon Glassman’s directorial debut Buffet Infinity is a prime example of this. While the concept of an alien invasion tale told exclusively through low-budget commercials is certainly admirable, it’s clearly better suited for a 30-minute short (ideally watched on Adult Swim) and not a 100-minute feature. The longer it went on, the more its absurdist charm dissipated, leaving this experiment fizzling as a result. Protect Ahmed at all costs though.