‘Friendship’ Review
Stars: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer | Written and Directed by Andrew DeYoung
What happens when a bromance goes wrong? That’s the subject of this A24 cringe-comedy from debut writer-director Andrew DeYoung, who wrote the script specifically for its star, Tim Robinson, star of the cult Netflix sketch show, I Think You Should Leave. That show specialised in super-awkward characters, and in other hands, Friendship could easily have felt like a comedy sketch stretched out to feature length, but DeYoung and Robinson carry it through, with frequently excruciating results.
Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a socially awkward office worker who has a good job and is married to Tami, a florist and recent cancer survivor. They have a teenage son, Stevie (Jack Dylan Grazer, from Shazam) together, but Craig’s attempts to bond with his son are as awkward as his attempts to bond with his male co-workers.
Things change when Craig walks a misdelivered package down the street and hands it to his new neighbour, shaggy-haired TV weatherman Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), whereupon he’s invited in and the two men quickly become friends. However, when Austin introduces Craig to his circle of guy buddies, a series of painful mishaps ensue, after which Austin abruptly ends the friendship, sending Craig into a spiral of confusion, awkwardness and increasingly bizarre behaviour.
DeYoung’s script does a good job of keeping the audience more or less on side throughout – we can see that Craig is socially awkward, prone to overreaction and capable of saying the wrong thing, but there’s a naïve sweetness to him too, at least until the final act, when his behaviour becomes much more unhinged. In turn, Robinson’s performance treads that tricky balance perfectly, and his weirdness becomes almost mesmerising as a result, because you never know what’s going to happen next.
Like Banshees of Inishirin, Friendship‘s script has something to say about the awkwardness of male friendship and the pain of a once treasured bromance coming to an end. And in terms of the direction, DeYoung maintains a finely calibrated, slightly absurd tone throughout, while showing a talent for escalation, especially when it comes to deeply excruciating moments, like Craig’s immediate attempt to atone after he’s gone too far in a boxing match with Austin.
Rudd has some experience with awkward bromance movies, having co-starred in 2009’s I Love You, Man, with Jason Segel. There are echoes of that here too, though Rudd is effectively playing the other side of the relationship this time round, and he brings a slightly edgier off-kilter weirdness than we’re used to seeing with his established screen persona, which works well.
In addition, Kate Mara is good value in an intriguingly underwritten role – there’s an offscreen subplot, for which viewers will easily be able to read between the lines, and she also has a similarly under-explored dynamic with her son (an early line has a confused Craig seeing them together and saying, “You guys kiss each other on the mouth?”). Similarly, Grazer is equally good value, and he also has an intriguingly underwritten offscreen subplot, because he apparently has two girlfriends, although we barely see them.
In short, Friendship is a smartly conceived cringe comedy with a pleasingly off-kilter absurdist streak and a pair of terrific comic performances at its centre. Here’s hoping DeYoung and Robinson continue their collaboration, because this Friendship could be a beautiful beginning.
**** 4/5
Friendship is out now.
