Let me be clear upfront: I’m not the world’s biggest Tim Robinson fan, but I have enjoyed most of the sketches I’ve seen from I Think You Should Leave, his Netflix sketch comedy series. At his best, I think his neurotic comedic persona speaks to a certain id inside all of us; we all wish we could say exactly what we were thinking all the time. Friendship, Robinson’s first big-screen vehicle, speaks to someone’s id, but certainly not everyone’s.
Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a middle-aged schlub who does have a fair few things going for him. He’s got a good job (at a company which hilariously makes phone applications more addicting), a wife named Tami (Kate Mara) who loves him and has recently beat cancer, and a teenage son named Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) who seems to be doing all right, even if he’s going through a bit of a punk phase. As Craig, Robinson basically puts on his awkward persona from his sketch show, and that’s amusing, but only up to a point. This point comes after he meets his cool new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd), a local weatherman.
Austin lets Craig pal around with him until Craig’s awkwardness and desperate need for validation end up drawing a line in the sand. From this moment on, Craig becomes what can only be described as a menace. The things he does to and around Austin no one would put up with, but because writer/director Andrew DeYoung’s script needs to get to where it goes, Craig is given second after third after fourth chances. Some of the ways in which people respond to his antics are realistic; he’s shunned from Austin’s friend group, which is what really sets him off. However, the most realistic response in my mind for someone behaving this way would be to get them some counseling.
Friendship is a film which doesn’t ultimately work, but not because it’s lazy in any way. Robinson is always trying to do something cutting edge, but I guess it all comes down to personal taste in cringe comedy. I prefer what I feel is more light-hearted in the work of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, for example. This film just goes too dark for me to get into its particular groove of gonzo satire. There’s definitely social commentary in there about the perils of male friendship, middle age, loneliness, and lack of community and fulfillment, but Robinson’s character and persona are so specific that it feels like a mistake on the film’s part to drop him into an otherwise fairly realistic world. The two worlds never mesh, so although we’re meant to be laughing at the cringeworthy factors of Craig’s antics, I just couldn’t help feeling sorry for all of his victims.
The biggest sin the film commits is in its handling of Tami, Craig’s wife. Kate Mara does what she can with the role, but the fact that Tami is written to react the most unrealistically to Craig’s behavior is hard to take. She often seems like she’s living some Norman Rockwell fantasy life, but any normal person would be pulling their hair out if they were married to this guy. When Craig performs his biggest blunder, abandoning Tami in a dangerous place after trying to recreate something Austin did for him that he found cool, her sluggishness in placing the blame on Craig is truly frustrating.
To be fair, there are genuine moments of earned levity all throughout Friendship. Most of these are slapstick or just funny one-off moments, but hey, they’re there and they work. Overall, the film feels made to push buttons, so perhaps in that way, I’ve responded how Robinson and DeYoung wanted me to respond. Buttons pushed? Yes. Movie enjoyed? Less so. | George Napper
