Comedy and horror have always made for natural cinematic bedfellows, yet it’s still rare to get a film like Friendship, where the comedy *is* the horror. The first big cinematic star vehicle for Tim Robinson since the wild success of Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave, it takes the skin-crawlingly hilarious cringe comedy of those sketches and, somehow, manages to stretch it to feature length without breaking it. The result is something very funny yet also just relentless, where big laughs mingle with the sort of nervous exhaustion generally reserved for films that lean much more heavily on ghosts, serial killers, and traumas past.
Robinson plays the impeccably named Craig Waterford (is there a less dignified male name than Craig? Friendship convincingly suggests not), a stranger in his own home. His wife Tami (Kate Mara), who recently beat cancer and has a hunky fireman ex-boyfriend who she’s still best friends with, and dirtbag-in-the-making teen son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) get on like a house on fire, but Craig is borderline invisible. The first person to really *see* him is new neighbour Austin (Paul Rudd), a laid back weatherman with a slew of cool hobbies who quickly becomes chummy with Craig who in turn (obviously, this is a Tim Robinson character) becomes utterly obsessed.
These early scenes of Craig essentially being lovestruck in the presence of Austin are a great mix of laugh-out-loud funny and existentially sad before everything gets more psychologically bizarre. First time writer-director Andrew DeYoung shoots Rudd like he’s a beautiful young woman in a ‘90s romcom (for a debut film, Friendship is very stylistically confident, knowing when to amp up the weirdness and when to just let the performances sing), and it’s hard to resist falling for Austin as quickly as Craig does. Naturally, though, things escalate.
After a mishap at a boys’ night with Austin’s friends turns into an outright farce in the hands of Craig’s social panic, Austin, in essence, breaks up with Craig, earning the desperate ire of a man earnestly baffled by the rules of male social bonding. The deeply awkward comedy that Robinson fans will be expecting is here, though the big laughs do get sparser and sparser as the slightly over-extended climax gets underway, but the feature length allows DeYoung time to earnestly explore what sort of psychological failings would *actually* turn a human being into a Robinson character.
Robinson makes a very convincing graduation to movie lead here and while it won’t change the minds of any full-on ITYSL sceptics, I don’t think you need to be a superfan to still really enjoy his performance here (though it certainly helps). Rudd has a much quieter role as the straight man, but his casting still feels vital; he’s probably the only actor working with the mix of comedy pedigree and proper Hollywood A-list charm that Austin needs to work.
Amidst all its madness and social malfunction, Friendship is also asking just how unremarkable a life you can live before you snap (Craig is constantly going on about the ‘new Marvel’ film but fails to ever even see it, and all he dreams about on a drug trip is getting his regular Subway order but toasted). Most Robinson characters are, beneath their truly insane facades, yearning to be accepted and Craig is no different, and nor is his failure to achieve any of his goals. At 100 minutes instead of the two or three you might be used to from him, it’s not as joke dense as Robinson’s absolute best stuff but, in a busy screen, it’s infectiously funny and embarrassing, an all-too-rare combination in the modern big-screen comedy landscape.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 