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That’s because buddies tend to be complementary, Fine adds. Downey’s sublimely idiosyncratic Holmes exasperates Law’s Watson in his heroic quest for normalcy but  also gives him a window onto the imagination. Watson in turn offers Holmes a secure foundation on which that window can be sprung. Finicky Felix provides Oscar with a haven of domesticity, while sloppy Oscar affords Felix the permission to play. Entirely logical Spock offers Kirk reason refined of any emotion and impulsive action while commanding, hot-blooded Kirk enables Spock to witness the vicarious thrill of visceral experience.

In what is perhaps the quintessential buddy pix, “Butch Cassidy,” and its Newman-Redford follow-up, “The Sting,” Newman’s sage sex symbol balances Redford’s relatively rookie hunk.

It’s a case, Fine says, of “Jerry Maguire’s” famous tagline: “You complete me.”

Not so black and white

The complementary nature of the buddy relationship is often accompanied by a tension born of circumstance, as in the movie “The Defiant Ones,” which finds Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier cast as members of a chain gang. The two loathe each other and not merely because they are a white guy and a black man on the wrong side of the law in the segregated South of the 1950s. As they struggle to free themselves, they come to understand that they are bound by a mutual respect and liking that extends beyond fear and even the grave.

Less than 15 years later, Hollywood would transcend racial differences in a small-screen pix that has come to define the oxymoronic male weeper and made stars of James Caan and Billy Dee Williams – “Brian’s Song.” It tells the story of Chicago Bears’ intense Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers (Williams) and his relationship with the easy-going Piccolo (Caan), a football player stricken with terminal cancer not long after turning pro. In one of the finest scenes in what many critics think is the best TV-movie ever made, Sayers accepts the George S. Halas Award for courage by noting that there’s one far worthier of it:

“It’s mine tonight and Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow. I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him, too. And tonight when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”

What gives this scene, the film and the entire buddy genre such a searing poignance is the emotional vulnerability and depth of connection displayed by the sex that is supposed to display neither.