Andrew Deyoung’s Friendship is a story about just that, a friendship. Tim Robinson’s Craig meets his new neighbor Austin, played by Paul Rudd, almost by happenstance. A package gets delivered to the wrong address, and Criag’s wife Tami (Kate Mara) sends Criag over to deliver it to the intended recipient, Austin. Craig is immediately smitten with how cool Austin is, and Austin, for whatever reason, takes a quick liking to Craig despite his incredibly apparent awkwardness. What follows is an uncomfortable journey through the highs and lows of this budding friendship as it essentially tears apart the lives of both men.
What I expected from Friendship was an exploration of male loneliness and a look at how hard it is for adults to make and maintain friendships. Instead, what I saw was an awkward look at a pitiful man essentially sabotaging his entire life in an attempt to keep a cool friend, while every single person around him either ignores how weird he is, or worse, actively makes fun of him for it. There are hints at male loneliness and the dangers of toxic masculine friendships in Friendship but they don’t tell the whole story.
Friendship is full of funny moments that will be a big hit with fans of Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, and I have to admit I found myself chuckling at a ton of jokes. However the parts that I wasn’t chuckling at – every interaction between Craig and his wife Tami, Craig’s coworkers making fun of him at every chance they got, etc – made it feel like Friendship didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. Am I supposed to feel bad for Craig? Am I supposed to laugh at him alongside everyone else? Am I supposed to root for him to put his life back together when his every attempt to get closer to Austin results in his life falling further apart? I’m a fan of Robinson’s comedy, but how much is too much?
Friendship can feel like a stream of I Think You Should Leave sketches with a unifying thread, but the benefit of an I Think You Should Leave sketch is that it’s short, it has an ending that allows you to escape from the uncomfortable awkwardness, leaving you free to find it even funnier on a rewatch now that you’re familiar with its awkward ups and downs. On the other hand, Friendship shows us what happens when an uncomfortable premise continues: you get to see an awkward man ruin his own life in longform, which makes it harder to laugh at the longer it goes on. Craig is ready to bend over backwards at every turn in an attempt to win Austin over, which in turn undermines every aspect of his character that I ended up rooting for. Just when you think things are going right for him because he’s finally making good decisions, he torpedoes it all to get back into Austin’s good graces. This is all made more uncomfortable by the fact that Craig clearly has issues that he needs to work on and yet there is seemingly no one in this guy’s corner. Worse yet, there are several characters who are actively outright mean to Craig without a single person jumping to his defense.
It’s not like Friendship is a bad film, it’s just that I left the theatre not really knowing how to feel. It’s beautifully shot, the performances are great, and again, there are a lot of very funny jokes that stem from Robinson’s unique brand of humor mixed with the way Rudd can utilize his effortless charm to play both a lovable goof and a disarming straight man. It’s also agonizingly uncomfortable, and it hurts to see so many characters pile on a man with a clear lack of any kind of social etiquette without anyone reaching out a hand to help him. Then again, like the best of I Think You Should Leave sketches, maybe a film like Friendship will only get better when I rewatch it now that I’m in on the joke.
Score: 7.5/10
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