Head into Friendship, the cringe comedy from writer-director Andrew DeYoung (Pen15) and leading man Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave), with fair warning. Robinson made his name in the spotlight of extremely awkward group situations made worse by compulsive missteps from his interchangeable central characters. These sketch circuses quickly fly off the rails of reality, narrowly careening between uncomfortable and hilarious. Robinson has made a career on the stuff, and over the past decade, taken the entire humor subgenre into new territory along with cringe luminaries like Zach Galifianakis, Kyle Mooney and Nathan Fielder.
For some, it’s an unwatchable kind of discomfort; for others, it’s sidesplitting absurdity. With Friendship, for 100 minutes, Robinson and DeYoung stretch the same formula to a nearly fatal dose.
Friendship quickly positions suburban business drone Craig Waterman toward a burgeoning friendship with new neighbor Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd) and away from his failing, sexless marriage with wife Tami (Kate Mara), newly in remission from cancer. Waterman’s obsession with male approval draws him to Carmichael’s cool mustachioed confidence and supportive friend group.
While Tami rekindles a relationship with her firefighter ex-boyfriend, Craig and Austin go on spontaneous adventures and bond over symbols of masculinity, finally earning Craig an invite to a beer-fueled hangout. Surrounded by the coolest guys he knows, Craig is momentarily unable to control a sudden stroke of embarrassment and commits a violent party foul, immediately killing the vibe.
Craig recognizes he’s done something wrong but doesn’t know how to make amends. His failure to overcome different iterations of this exact challenge — with Tami and their son, with his co-workers and neighbors — triumphs as the story’s most cutting statement on the shared masculine tendency toward self-destructive emotional immaturity.
The rest of the movie chronicles Craig’s extended psychosocial tailspin. Desperate for a redo, Craig catches a becloaked Austin headed to a medieval faire, prompting a curt breakup. A devastated Craig uses his family to re-create the best memories of his friendship with Austin, only deepening his willful estrangement from an ailing wife and earnest son. The spiral brings many, many laughs as Robinson gets the rare chance to fully flesh out a character within his proven comedic groove. Craig’s brief experiment with a hallucinogenic toad in the back of a cellphone store stands out as a masterful collision of plot and humor.
Friendship’s one surprise — Austin’s deepest secret, accidentally shared with Craig — comes with a brief flash of male vulnerability that is ultimately bungled at the film’s climax. Smart writing and perfect casting set up a sophisticated satire of male loneliness. Instead, the movie ends as a painfully absurd portrait driven by Robinson’s funny but limiting ability to keep moving along one axis while ignoring human consequences. Without any emotional payoff, Friendship succumbs to the familiar male tendency to make fun of everything.
