Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Friendship’ on VOD, a Tim Robinson-Paul Rudd Buddy Comedy That Hops the Rails Into the Surreal

By John Serba

Tim Robinson makes his feature-film debut with Friendship (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video), a deranged buddy comedy co-starring Paul Rudd. Director Andrew DeYoung reportedly wrote the film specifically for Robinson, and it sometimes plays like an extended sketch from hit Netflix series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson – not that you need to have seen the show to appreciate the film’s hilariously cracked bromance. 

FRIENDSHIP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The scene: A support group for cancer survivors. Tami Waterman (Kate Mara) shares that she’s been cancer-free for a year but lives in constant fear that it’ll come back. She tops off her comments with the question, “Will I ever orgasm again?” Her husband Craig (Robinson) is right next to her – yes, eeeeeshhhh – and he assures everyone that he has been “orgasming just fine.” What an intro. Everyone’s doomed. Well, everyone in Tami and Craig’s marriage, anyway. She’s a florist working out of their home and he has a this-really-sucks-shit job where he’s tasked with making apps and smartphones more addictive. Their son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) kisses his mother direct on the lips while offering his father little more than baseline acknowledgment. The house is for sale. Tami keeps mentioning her ex: Devon this, Devon that, Devon Devon Devon. Craig tries to rouse the family to see “the new Marvel” but nobody else gives a damn about that. Like I said. Doomed.

Lucky for Craig (I think), the mailman is incompetent. He keeps dropping the neighbors’ packages on the Watermans’ stoop. Craig trucks the box past a moving van to the house and knocks and Austin (Rudd) answers. Craig is kinda instantly wowed by Austin’s cool-dude charisma. He’s the weatherman on Channel 3. He plays in a band. He has a cool old truck. Anybody else notice the lens-flare motes blotting out Craig’s head in that shot as he stands on Austin’s porch? I think it’s a warning: Danger. Nimrod city. Desperate weirdo on the premises. Do not Chekov’s-gun this plot. 

But the two dudes become pals. Austin’s presence puts Craig’s personality in sharper contrast. Craig is an awkward, grating, narcissistic, deeply insecure tryhard, passing for your average, doughy, beige-wearing suburbanite who’s very proud that he successfully lobbied the city to get speed bumps put on their street. The truth becomes increasingly prevalent as Austin takes Craig mushroom hunting, and on an adventure through the aqueducts so they can break into City Hall. Craig and Tami go see Austin’s band. Austin invites Craig over for beers with the guys. No matter the scenario, Craig flails and struggles to not be a massive chode. He’s just got the chode gene, and lacks the self-awareness to manage or overcome it. It’s clear Austin has inspired Craig – to be a maniac. Did I mention Austin has a gold pistol in an ornate hinged box? Well, he does. And I’ll be damned if they didn’t do it. They Chekov’s-gunned this plot.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Neighbors. Sure, I could drop I Love You, Man like everyone else does, because of the Paul Rudd connection. But Friendship is essentially an unofficial remake of near-lost 1981 John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd anti-classic Neighbors, from the testy relationship and suburban unease at its core to the surreal dream logic of its tone and plotting. I will take/manufacture any half-assed opportunity to plug Neighbors – I’m so hungry to make the world see it, I could eat a baby’s butt through a park bench – but this time, it’s legit. 

Performance Worth Watching: Trying… to look away from… Robinson… he’s so awkward… but I’m failing.

Memorable Dialogue: This one’s best left out of context: “But I do have toad.”

Sex and Skin: Thank god there is none, because the thought of this Robinson character– no, let’s just stop right there.

Photo: Everett Collection

Our Take: Are we at the point where only the most irritating khaki-coated normie slobs like Craig get hyped for “the new Marvel”? Almost. Of course, that’s not the whole point and nothing but the point of Friendship, but it’s part of the point, that Craig is a familiar, but rather yucky character who comes perilously close to being sympathetic and worthy of redemption after a series of social fauxs paseses – but never quite gets there. Robinson inevitably pulls back at the very last second, rendering this a black comedy, albeit one that peers into the abyss but doesn’t quite pitch itself into the pitch. Some may say Robinson and DeYoung lack the killer instinct to drive the nails in all the way, but I’d assert that the film is more tonally creative as it is, soft, indistinct and malleable like, you might say, the contents of Craig’s skull. The film ultimately reflects the state of its protagonist’s mind.

I know. I’m dangerously close to being an apologist for “cringe comedy,” but let it be known it never triggered my allergy for profound awkwardness. Friendship keeps us off-balance by design. Visually, it’s grainy and dim, resembling a gritty thriller more than a bright, zany comedy. The soundtrack is a disorienting melange of ’80s horror synths, gauzy dreampop and, uh, Slipknot. The interiors often feel cramped. Are the walls closing in on Craig? Maybe, if you’re OK with stretching the metaphor a little, to accommodate the fact that the movie’s reality has no firm boundaries. Unlike Austin, who at one point “breaks up” with Craig, and ends up being the one pebble that derails the guy’s crazy train.

And so the movie keeps us in suspense: When will Craig crack, and will he have the yarbles to do something truly nutso? It starts with nosebleeds and daydreams about rescuing Austin or bro-ing out with him in a yellow Corvette. And when Craig is forced back into his lonely corner, the crazy starts oozing out of the seams. Robinson is amusing on the surface and upsetting when you dig past the exposed funny bone to see what the rest of the character skeleton looks like. The actor is hilarious whether delivering hand-grenade one-liners, turning conventional gags into left-field weirdness (his hallucinogenic drug trip is extraordinarily funny), or simply wearing a big ugly stupid puffy beige winter coat like a world-class gump. 

Austin, it turns out, is a piece of work too, a guy who projects an ideal version of himself to others – such is the pop psychology of a media personality – but like most of us, he has his wits about more often than not. In a more conventional movie, Austin and Craig would balance each other out and reach a tidy resolution. But ironically, that would be less reflective of reality than this inspired, bizarre Friendship. 

Our Call: Friendship may not be for everybody. But for some of us, it inspires the biggest laughs of the year so far. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.