The frenetic brand of humour that Tim Robinson brings to Friendship comes from a long lineage. There have been turbo-charged, mad-staring, cringe-inducing figures occupying the centre of comedies and propelling them at least as far back as Molière, and continuing through John Cleese, Jim Carrey, and others.
Robinson made his name in quickfire TV series consisting of sequences of gags, such as Netflix's I Think You Should Leave. Such sketch-based material is easy binge-fodder, but after a few episodes it can start to feel like a disposable, single-use product. It is therefore understandable that Robinson and writer-director Andrew DeYoung, who makes his full-length film debut on Friendship, set out to make something more substantial and durable. And, as long as one can get beyond the cringe, they succeeded (pictured below: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd).
DeYoung wanted to explore the idea of two middle-aged men establishing a friendship and then going through an acrimonious break-up, the story loosely based on his own experience of being ghosted by a friend during lockdown. A misdirected parcel leads Craig Waterman (Robinson) to the house of a neighbour, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a TV weatherman and member of a rock band. Craig soon becomed overawed by the glamorous life Austin seems to live.
In this longer-form comedy, Robinson is obliged to return to scenes reminiscent of previous idiocies and to face up to the consequences, rather than simply upping sticks and moving on to the next gag. No jokes are wasted here; Waterman does seem to fall into just about every puddle that appears on the screen.
So after Craig has felt the curious and embarrassing need to mock-apologise for something and ostentatiously eaten a bar of toilet soap in front of the new friends he's acquired through Austin, he has to get used to the idea that he might no longer be their or anyone's ideal buddy on that or any other evening. But Craig is deternined not to lose the bromance with Austin (pictured below: Tim Robinson as the rejected Craig).
More seriously, when Craig takes his level-headed wife Tami (Kate Mara, excellent) on a pointlessly dangerous tour of the city’s sewers and manages to lose sight of her, there is a reckoning to be held on whether their strained – and much joked-about marriage – might just have ended. I couldn’t help reflecting that there are shades of Tom Hanks in Big in Craig’s disconnection to the world of adults and responsibility. Tami frustratedly asks him at one point, “Do you ever listen?” By the end, she has labelled him as a narcissist.
Craig and Tami's teenage son Steven offers a distancing perspective of a child’s world-view on his dad; Jack Dylan Grazer plays him knowingly and sensitively. The multiple angles on Craig's misalignment and the suspense that Friendship generates alongside the comedy are what gives the film a momentum and makes it absorbing.
There are some insightful repeated motifs, plot lines, and running gags, such as Craig and Austin gazing into antiquity as they bond over ancient weapons (ominously enough), or various takes on Craig’s job at a tech company, which develops addictive apps that give people “the illusion of self-expression” and is expanding into the political arena. These themes and story elements, and the atmospheric music score by Keegan DeWitt – which uses choirs, synths, and all kinds of clever needle drops – create tension as they counterbalance Robinson’s gags and pranks.
Robinson is Marmite, and he knows it. Yet Friendship is a strong, thought-provoking, often very funny movie. When comedy is made like this, it sticks.
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