Friendship
The comedy of mortification is on tap in this icky, odd tale of an unbelievably awkward guy who pals up with the cool new dude down the street, until he gets unceremoniously dumped.
I couldn’t quite buddy up to “Friendship.”
I’m into black comedy and movies that poke around into the awkward, uncomfortable spaces that exist between people. There are some funny moments in “Friendship,” but mostly it seems icky and odd. I think it could have been daring and wicked as a 9-minute comedy sketch, but at over 90 minutes it feels like taffy stretched out too far.
Writer/director Andrew DeYoung comes from a television background, and that’s really what this feels like: a “Saturday Night Live” bit somebody hoped would translate to the big screen.
It doesn’t.
It stars Paul Rudd as Austin, an inexpressibly cool guy who moves in down the street. He’s laid-back, spectacularly mustachioed and has a bit of a lounge singer vibe, though he actually plays in a rock band. A TV weatherman on a local station, he could be a cousin to Rudd’s character in the “Anchorman” movies.
The central character, though, is Craig, who lives up the block and is played by Tim Robinson, who as it happens used to be a writer and performer on “SNL.” Craig is basically the most socially awkward person on the planet, the sort of person who can inject anxiety into any gathering of people.
For example, when we first meet him Craig is attending a cancer survivors support group with his wife, Tammy (Kate Mara), who has been in remission for 12 months. In the course of opening up about her fears, she mentions she’s been unable to have an orgasm since her ordeal and worries she never will again. A few beats later, Craig attempts a joke that he’s still having orgasms just fine.
It’s like this at his job, too, where Craig works on digital solutions to make people become addicted to their apps so they never put their phones down. It seems of a piece with his makeup, since Craig seems incapable of any kind of empathy for others. We wonder, and not for the first time, if he’s undiagnosed on the spectrum.
As if to underscore this, Craig only seems to dress in mopey shades of tan and brown, including an omnipresent puffy winter coat straight from George Costanza’s closet.
After he pops over to deliver a misdirected piece of mail, Craig is astonished that Austin immediately befriends him, even taking him out for an evening of adventures crawling through a secret maze in the aqueduct system under their town of Clovis. (No state is ever stated, but I’m guessing Midwest.) Austin shows him how to pick and eat wild mushrooms, invites him to his band’s show, and it seems they are on the fast track to true friendship.
But then Craig acts bizarrely in front of some of Austin’s older friends, and he finds himself unceremoniously dumped just as he thought the bromance was hitting high gear. “We had a couple of nice hangs, but I think it’s best we go our separate ways,” Austin says curtly.
Needless to say, Craig does not take it well and begins to act out in gradually more outlandish and dangerous ways. Soon enough he and Austin are out-and-out antagonists. Tammy doesn’t exactly jive with this new version of her weirdo husband, and also checks out.
Robinson really leans into this performance, and I guess that’s commendable. In virtually every scene, Craig makes a fool of himself. He seems to be aware of it on some level, and has no social circle beyond Tammy and their 16-year-old son, Stevie (Jack Dylan Grazer). Like all teens he’s completely embarrassed by his father, though in this case it seems well justified.
Really, that’s what the movie is all about: mortification. There’s a certain strain of humor, no doubt receiving nourishment from online interactions, in which people take great delight in others making a spectacle of themselves. It’s schadenfreude, played for yuks.
Perhaps because I’m kind of awkward and adept at making a fool of myself, I don’t go in for this kind of stuff. The idea is supposed to be that Craig’s litany of woes is supposed to be so unceasing and over the top that we start to root for him. Mostly, I wished he’d go away.
The truth is, I didn’t believe Craig for a minute as a real person. He’s 100% a comedy construct, something dreamed up to be a vehicle for this sort of sniggering humor. I mean, for starters, how in the world did he end up with Tammy, a gorgeous lady with her own flower shop? Or rise up the ranks to senior management at his firm?
Did. Not. Buy. It.
There’s also something quite evident the movie is clearly playing up: Craig is a very ordinary-looking guy, a fellow you’d pass in an office cubicle and not look twice at. Austin, Tammy, Stevie… everybody else looks like movie stars. It’s almost as if you were watching a film with all the usual gorgeous people, and the characters suddenly turned to the audience and pointed out one member to come up and join them. Of course, in comparison he seems quite the schlub.
I have a feeling more people are going to like “Friendship” than I did. That’s OK. It just wasn’t for me. We can still be friends, though… right?
So, a guy who looks like Tim Robinson couldn't possibly have a pretty wife and good job? That's a depressing reinforcement of shallow societal standards. I recently watched "Junior" and had no problem buying Danny DeVito as a successful OB/GYN with a lovely ex-wife. People come in all shapes and sizes, and the movies are a wonderful place to embrace that, especially when society isn't willing. Granted, I haven't seen "Friendship," so I don't know if the film actually comments on Craig's looks in comparison to his wife's. But attraction is a complex thing that's different for everyone. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying it's a bummer to see critics not embrace that complexity and reinforce the most antiquated "she's out of his league" stuff. And I wouldn't say that if this site didn't include reviews that constantly comment on actors' appearances.