Forming a new friendship with someone in your 40s is challenging enough; try doing it if you’re an introvert. Writer/director Andrew DeYoung’s comedy “Friendship” is a hilariously dark look at male bonding with a leading performance from Tim Robinson that audiences won’t soon forget.
Where to begin with this movie? I guess, for starters, a lot depends on your familiarity with comedian Tim Robinson’s television work on “Detroiters” and “I Think You Should Leave.” The latter is a three-season Emmy award-winning sketch comedy from Netflix, and the former is a two-season comedy about two hapless advertising executives that you can currently catch on Netflix. Both shows are hilarious. “I Think You Should Leave” is something that I feel almost embarrassed to reveal, as I’ve watched it so many times that it’s crept into my vernacular and shaped my quotable quotes to the point where, at times, I feel I’m living in one of its sketches.
“I Think You Should Leave” is a perfect primer for “Friendship” in that nearly every sketch involves some form of social awkwardness that, on the one hand, feels absurd and, on the other, feels almost too real in that we’ve all encountered someone who is that awkward. Tim Robinson is the ringleader of many of these sketches, and his looney approach to social behavior and mores is something you either click with or you don’t. I find it hilarious, and it was the primary reason I sought “Friendship” out in the theater.
In “Friendship,” Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a small-town marketing executive who, on the surface, has a perfectly ordinary and bland life. However, that static existence is uprooted when he delivers an incorrectly delivered package to a new neighbor, Austin Carmichael, the local weatherman, played by Paul Rudd. Robinson’s Waterman has a seemingly stable job, but his coworkers don’t want to hang out with him. Even Waterman’s wife, Tami (Kate Mara), a cancer survivor, prefers the company of her ex-boyfriend Devon to spend time with him. So, when Rudd invites Robinson to hang out for an evening, Robinson is taken aback by another male wanting to be his friend.
Rudd is a bit of an adventure seeker, and maybe he’s just trying to test the early friendship to see what kind of man Robinson is. Still, Robinson is pulled in by Rudd’s seductive charms and soon sees the possibilities of a social world that has been all but nonexistent in his adult life.
Before long, Robinson gets invited to hang with Rudd and Rudd’s buddies, and that’s when things go off the rails. In typical “I Think You Should Leave” fashion, Robinson’s peculiar nature, nerves, and inability to socialize with the so-called normals get him a quick exit from the friend group. And if Robinson’s Waterman couldn’t understand why his odd behavior freaked Rudd and Rudd’s friends out, then he certainly isn’t going to understand Rudd abruptly ending the friendship altogether.
“Friendship” is what I call an uncomfortable comedy. I put it in the category of dark comedies like 1981’s “Neighbors, 1985’s “After Hours.” or 1996’s “The Cable Guy.” The difference here is that while those movies follow a protagonist continually being outdone by either a loose cannon antagonist or worsening circumstances, in “Friendship,” we’re hunkered down with the loose cannon. Instead of sympathizing with Rudd, who can’t shake a guy who can’t take a hint, we have to watch the can’t-take-a-hint guy’s world slowly unravel. And that’s what makes this film uncomfortable to watch, as hilarious as it is for the majority of its 97 minutes.
DeYoung shoots the movie as if it were an independent horror film. There’s a scene later in the movie, shot in aqueducts under the city, that feels more unnerving than most Blumhouse scare fests. And that seems to be the point. Friendship can be a scary thing for an adult. Building trust with someone new in a platonic relationship is no different than starting a romantic one. And sometimes they don’t work out.
I mentioned my familiarity with Robinson’s most known work, “I Think You Should Leave.” If you are a fan of that show, then you’ll want to see “Friendship” as soon as possible. Many of the sketches in “I Think You Should Leave” build upon repetitive themes, phrases, and situations that are hilarious to watch as you get to know Robinson’s quirks and fondness for certain tropes. Robinson finds new ways to work those into “Friendship,” and those moments aren’t so much hidden Easter eggs as they are rewards for the initiated. For those unfamiliar with Robinson and his brand of humor, “Friendship” could be a completely new and unexpected experience. I don’t know what you’ll think of this movie. I can see people finding the entire watch unpleasant, uncomfortable, and unfunny. On the flip side, if you came back and told me it was one of the weirdest, strangest, and funniest films you’ve ever seen, I’d get it. I’d say, “Welcome aboard.”
James Kent is the arts editor at the Mountain Times.
