Friendship (2024 | USA | 100 minutes | Andrew DeYoung)
Some movies have trigger warnings. I’d propose a content test before seeing Friendship, the new Tim Robinson comedy. Have you seen at least one episode of I Think You Should Leave on Netflix? Were you able to make it through the twenty minutes of sketch comedy show without nearly (or actually) choking to death with laughter? If you survived by turning it off immediately in cringing discomfort and cancelling your subscription, Friendship is certainly Not For You. However, if you couldn’t wait the sixty seconds for the streamer to autoplay the next episode, you’ve probably already had advance tickets to Friendship for months.
Although the movie is an original creation of comedy veteran Andrew DeYoung, it plays heavily on all the awkward quirks that Tim Robinson has honed to uncomfortable perfection over the years. Here, the various flavors of near-alien oblivion, perpetually out-of-place pathos, and a crushing inability to connect are integrated into a single character who spirals his way through a hundred hilarious minutes. We meet Craig Waterman, suburban dad and addictive app designer, on entirely the wrong wavelength attending a support group with his cancer-survivor wife Tami (Kate Mara).
She’s in remission from the disease, but the condition of their homelife is another story. She’s busy running an independent floral shop from her kitchen table and undersized hatchback; their son (Jack Dylan Grazer) is overly affectionate with her; neither has time to go to the new Marvel with dear old dad even though it’s “supposed to be nuts”. Despite the warm glow of the upcoming holidays captured by Andy Rydzewski’s cinematography, he’s the odd man out in a dark corner on his recliner with nothing to do outside of his work. With their house up for sale, the family’s on their way out of the neighborhood whose streets Craig finally made safe through constant complaining for speed bumps.
A little lifeline comes in the form of an invite for get-to-know-you drinks from the new neighbor whose packages keep getting misdelivered to their house. Where Craig’s a ball of repressed anxiety and social awkwardness garbed in an overstuffed parka, his neighbor across the icy street is the self-assured, perpetually relaxed, outstandingly mustachioed new local weatherman, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd).
It must be stressed that Austin is not cool, but is nevertheless much cooler than Craig, but that’s an impossibly low bar to clear. His hobbies include collecting prehistoric tools, playing in a dadcore rock band, and exploring underground tunnels. His ability to put Craig at ease over beers is so powerful that it induces a bloody nose. A casual suggestion that they hang out again nearly sends him to the moon. Over a couple of days of random adventures like seeing one of his shows, suburban spelunking, and mushroom hunting, Austin is so at ease that he’s barely fazed by Craig’s ability to find himself stuck in the mud at every turn. This rare acceptance fills a void Craig didn’t know he had; soon he’s reimagining his life and daydreaming of a sportscar future of extreme competence, rocking hard, and fending off apocalypses with his best friend.
We are living in an antisocial century with a so-called male loneliness epidemic. Whether that’s real, a setup for a punch line, or a motivation for a horrific AI future is not really a question addressed by this heightened comedy that operates just outside the bounds of our everyday reality. But when the transition from one-on-one hangouts craters catastrophically when a self-doubting Craig attempts to make the leap to hanging with the guys, we can sympathize with the emotional crash that accompanies withdrawal from the intoxicating run of fleeting friendship.
Having tasted the potent brew of acceptance and companionship, Craig spirals hard when Austin gives their arrangement a rethink and demands a conscious uncoupling. Every facet of his personal and professional life spirals, with each misguided attempt to chase the highs of the prior week rich fodder for gut-busting comedy. Failing over and over again intensifies the cringe to a near surreal humor-horror hybrid, tightly packed with a dense assault of gasps and laughs.
Amid the escalating absurdity, DeYoung threads a strain of minor tragedy in Craig’s growing desperation and perpetual abject failures. It can’t be easy to perform alongside Robinson’s otherworldly commitment to a character built with both grand tics and precise attention to microscopic details, but the supporting cast holds their own as more than credible foils. Mara plays it mostly straight as the long-suffering wife; Rudd has more latitude to concoct a character whose anxieties are just more normally contained. It’s a feat of writing and performance that the film never spins out of control with audience alienation. Instead, it races forward, continuously recalibrating with enough surprising gags and zags, moments of relief, and perpetual jokes that you almost don’t want this complete weirdo’s suffering to end.
Whether you see it alone or with a pack of pals, definitely take time to see this one in a theater crowded with fellow sickos. It’s definitely nuts.
Friendship arrives in Seattle theaters on May 16 and opens nationwide next weekend.
Image courtesy A24.