Getting new friends as an adult is admittedly hard. When you’re young, you pick them up left and right and they come and go just as quickly. The older you get, friends fall by the wayside, and seemingly before you know it, you’ve got no one. At least that’s how it seems for Craig, played brilliantly by Tim Robinson in writer Andrew DeYoung’s directorial debut, Friendship.
Craig’s got a wife, Tami (Kate Mara), who’s still struggling to find her way as a post-cancer survivor and his teenage son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), who is a bit too close to her. Things are seemingly fine and life is mostly good. That is, until he meets Austin (Paul Rudd), a local weatherman who’s just moved into the neighborhood.
After inviting him over for a drink, the two quickly bond. Austin shows him a world he never knew existed; they go foraging for mushrooms, explore the local sewer system. He even “goes out on a school night” to watch his band play at a local club.
With the encouragement of Tami, he goes to Austin’s to hang out on a bros night. The guys tell stories, laugh and even sing. When Austin pulls out the boxing gloves and hands them to him for a fun round, Craig, wanting to be liked, decks him. And that’s where the downward spiral begins.
Craig desperately wants to be back in Austin’s good graces. He shows up at the TV station, goes to his house, but nothing works. At each rejection, you can almost feel him get more and more desperate to rekindle the friendship.
DeYoung has turned up the cringe factor to 11. Heck, more like 15. And while there are definitely some funny moments, he’s created a fascinating look at what a man will do, what this man will do, try and retain something that he almost had; acceptance.As the layers of insanity piled on top of each other, one after the other, I was literally shifting in my seat, screaming in my head, “No! Why are you doing this?” It’s one of those films you’ll want to rewatch just to relive these cringey moments.
We all get used to our lives and don’t realize how mundane things are until something happens, either an event, a situation, or change, big or small, and that’s what happens with Tami. Before Austin comes into their lives, she was content dealing with Craig’s nonsense, but after, you can feel the wings starting to grow back. Mara is really good here.
Rudd piles on the charisma, and heck yeah—who wouldn’t want to be friends with him? The guy’s a TV weatherman. He plays in his own band. He knows the local sewer system like the back of his hand. Sign me up.
But it’s really Robinson’s film and he nails it. Like his Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave, he never plays it for laughs. His deadly serious demeanor is what sells the entire thing.
In a film where you don’t know what’s going to happen next, DeYoung keeps the audience on their toes and nails the ending perfectly.
