Friendship opens in theaters Friday, May 9. This assessment relies on a screening on the 2025 SXSW Film and Television Festival.
Tim Robinson’s character in Friendship is so good for his comedic persona, it’s unimaginable that he didn’t write it himself. It was written for him, to be clear; director Andrew DeYoung mentioned in an interview final fall that he despatched the screenplay to Robinson with a observe that mentioned he needed Robinson for the half, and that he deliberate to shoot it like a Paul Thomas Anderson film. (More on that later.) Friendless, clueless, and liable to suits of pissed off rage, Craig Waterman is sort of a character from Robinson’s cringe-comedy sequence I Think You Should Leave, with about as a lot depth and equal capability for laughs.
Craig’s neighbor Austin is an ideal match for Paul Rudd, too. Austin is a weatherman for a neighborhood information station, with a thick mustache, a wonderful head of hair, a sizzling spouse, and a profitable native storage band. Austin has a number of associates, and likes to have them over for beers on a Friday night time. Austin represents a sure kind of quietly assured man, the type who collects vinyl and drinks craft brews and wears cool denims that match him excellent. Craig, in the meantime, is neither assured nor quiet. He works for an organization that makes a speciality of making apps extra addictive, is all the time holding an awkwardly outsized beverage, and buys all of his garments from an organization referred to as Ocean View Dining.
The solely one that can stand Craig is his spouse Tami (Kate Mara) – and that comes and goes, frankly. He was the secure alternative, a steady presence for Tami and their son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). Even so, Craig is insufficient as a supplier: A operating visible gag includes Tami making an attempt to jam massive floral preparations right into a tiny good automotive, as a result of Craig can’t afford to purchase her an even bigger one. He’s insufficient in numerous methods, truly, and far of the humor in Friendship revolves round Craig’s metaphorical, feature-length cuckolding. His manhood is regularly undercut by Tami, by Austin, by the blokes at work, by Tami’s horny firefighter ex, and even by Steven, who has two girlfriends and kisses his mother on the mouth.
Craig reacts like a Tim Robinson character, which is to say that he takes it till he explodes in a match of impotent rage. Robinson’s comedy is all about inappropriate reactions to ridiculous scenes: Think of the I Think You Should Leave sketch with Tim Heidecker as a condescending, gazpacho-craving boyfriend who populates a recreation of Celebrity with the un-guessable names of historic jazz musicians. And that fashion manifests from Friendship’s opening moments, at a support-group assembly the place Tami says that her most cancers has been in remission for a yr now (that is by no means talked about once more, by the best way) however that there are particular issues that also trouble her, like questioning if she’ll ever have an orgasm once more. Then it’s Craig’s flip to share. “I’m orgasming simply positive,” he says.
From there, we pivot to Craig’s burgeoning relationship with Austin, who’s new to the neighborhood and really beneficiant in direction of the childlike fool subsequent door. They have just a few “good hangs,” exploring the tunnels beneath their small city and foraging for wild mushrooms within the close by woods. Then Craig humiliates himself at boys’ night time, prompting Austin to politely inform him that he’s not taken with being bros. This occurs a half-hour into this 100-minute film, making its title considerably deceptive: Most of Friendship is about Craig’s freakout over being friend-dumped, moderately than the friendship itself.
A sequence of escalating absurdist eventualities comply with, the funniest of which sees Craig mendacity on the ground within the stockroom of a mobile phone retailer and licking a toad an 18-year-old named T-Boy (don’t ask) tells him will take him on a mind-bending psychedelic journey. You’ll have to observe the film to seek out out the place Craig’s thoughts’s eye takes him, nevertheless it’s foolish and surprising and provides Robinson the chance to have certainly one of his signature tantrums. The surrealist touches in DeYoung’s filmmaking are minimal, however he’s keen on the evocative push-ins and Steadicam monitoring photographs favored by his professed inspiration Anderson, an elevated directing fashion that looks like a tongue-in-cheek bit in a comedy like Friendship.
Rudd mainly disappears after the primary act, and Mara actually disappears into the sewers for just a few scenes. Robinson’s frequent collaborator (and fellow chronicler of brain-rotted Twenty first-century guys) Conner O’Malley exhibits up for a cameo, standing on a chair and ranting about how “we must always nonetheless be in Afghanistan.” Robinson loses his cellphone in a puddle, smashes one other one towards a wall, and ruins a number of pairs of OVD khakis. His physical-comedy instincts are impeccable, even when the entire thing begins to really feel repetitive after some time. (For comparability’s sake: Friendship runs about so long as a full season of I Think You Should Leave.)
The total impact is of a sequence of interconnected comedy sketches on the unfastened themes of manhood and male bonding, that are hilarious in case you vibe with Robinson’s fashion of humor and unbearable in case you don’t. Friendship obtained large laughs at SXSW, leaving a handful of Robinson naysayers alienated and stone-faced of their theater seats. Sounds just like the premise for a Tim Robinson sketch.
