When I saw the trailer for Friendship, I thought it looked like a new, fun Seth Rogen-style comedy about male friendship, male loneliness and male stupidity. Sold!
Like nearly everyone, I think Paul Rudd is hilarious, and I expected this to be a more sane version of the infamous Belushi/Aykroyd odd-couple-next-door flick, Neighbors. Instead, Andrew DeYoung’s fantastic feature film debut reminded me of Adam McKay’s subversive, misunderstood masterpiece The Other Guys and Ben Stiller’s perennially underrated dark satire The Cable Guy. Friendship is a movie that upsets the expectations of bawdy buddy comedies to deliver something deeper, creepier, more human and disturbing than most audiences are prepared for. The surprising tones and twists only make this comedy extra hilarious, even as its sophisticated editing, photography and performances mark it as one of the best movies of the year.
In the film’s first act, we watch as Craig Waterman’s (Tim Robinson) suburban life is quietly falling apart: he’s an uninspired marketing executive whose florist wife Tami (Kate Mara) is a recent cancer survivor. The health scare has taken a toll on their marriage, and their teenage son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) has an unusually close attachment to his mother, but maintains a chilly distance from his father. The family is preparing to sell their house, and nothing creates stress like moving.
When a bungled package delivery brings Craig into contact with his new neighbor Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a charismatic local television weatherman, Craig finds an unexpected opportunity for connection. The two men bond over an evening that includes urban exploring, listening to old punk rock and sharing a mutual appreciation for paleolithic artifacts. Craig struggles to read social cues and can be benignly self-involved. Austin represents everything Craig wishes he could be — confident, worldly, effortlessly cool. Man crush confirmed.
What begins as a promising bromance quickly becomes complicated by Craig’s increasingly desperate attempts to secure the friendship. Craig constantly tries to ingratiate himself, but his obsessive personality and awkward social instincts begin to alienate Austin. Craig tries to emulate his neighbor’s casual demeanor with his own family, but the more Craig pushes for intimacy and acceptance, the more people push him away, and his life begins to spiral out of control.
As Craig’s fixation intensifies, consequences ripple through every part of his life — his job, his marriage, his relationship with his son, and his standing in the community. Craig’s attempts to recapture the connection he and Austin shared when they first met lead him down increasingly chaotic paths, with each zany misstep disturbingly compounding the next. The film follows Craig’s descent as his desperation to belong transforms from endearing awkwardness into something more destructive.
The journey is alternately upsetting and uproarious, with the imbalances consistently tipping over into laugh-out-loud physical comedy and line readings. DeYoung and Rudd collaborate to make Austin a slightly toned-down version of his weatherman persona from Anchorman, Brian Fantana. Rudd’s take is bigger-than-life, just a little unreal. In fact, most of the characters in the movie seem to inhabit a heightened, comedy feature reality. But Robinson’s Craig is operating in a completely different context. And the collisions — literal and figurative — between Craig and the people and places, and cars and sliding glass doors he plows through are sometimes as tragic as they are sidesplitting.
Friendship is one of the most unique comedies I’ve seen in a long time. In addition to the director and great cast, cinematographer Andy Rydzewski and editor Sophie Corra also deserve credit for making the look and pace of this picture support and reinforce its unusual tones and temperament. If you’re willing to embrace discomfort and loneliness as a path to insight and connection — and gut-busting laughs — Friendship goes where most comedies don’t dare.
Friendship is streaming on HBO MAX.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.