Between work-life balance, family commitments and general social anxiety, anyone can tell you it’s not easy to make new friends as an adult. Writer-director Andrew DeYonge and Tim Robinson use this relatable struggle as the basis of their new dark comedy Friendship, and the end result is not just the funniest movie I saw at TIFF 2024; it’s the hardest I’ve laughed at any movie all year.
Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) is a suburban office worker who can’t seem to connect with anybody around him, from his co-workers to his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and teenage son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). One day, a wrongly delivered package leads Craig to meet his new neighbour, local weatherman Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd).
The duo immediately hit it off, with Craig enamoured by his laid-back personality, style and his weird knowledge of the town’s sewers. However, after Craig’s awkward personality causes a group hangout to go south, Austin decides to push pause on their friendship, prompting Craig to go to absurd lengths to retain his new friendship at any cost.
“Friendship is the most I’ve laughed at in a theatre since Jackass Forever, but it’s certainly not a film not for everyone.”
Anyone who has watched Tim Robinson’s show I Think You Should Leave would be immediately familiar with Friendship’s style of humour. The film essentially functions as a feature-length version of the Netflix series if it crosses over with Paul Rudd’s bromantic comedy I Love You, Man. It’s a relatively loose narrative that’s mostly just a playground for DeYonge and Robinson to display the latter’s brand of humour on the big screen, consisting of his character attempting to be relatable to the people around him (in this case, wanting to avoid spoilers to “the new Marvel” everyone but him has seen), and his failure to be normal making things significantly worse for everyone around him.
The entirety of Friendship’s cast is equally game for the weird turns the film takes. Tim Robinson is incredible at trying to maintain an “aw shucks” facade while becoming more unhinged by the second, making every interaction he has both deeply uncomfortable and absolutely hilarious. Paul Rudd is great at bouncing off Robinson’s weirdness with his trademark everyman charm. However, the biggest surprise came courtesy of Kate Mara, using the straight-woman role to deliver some of the movie’s funniest (and surprisingly darkest) moments with complete deadpan sincerity.
What makes Robinson’s comedy different from something like Will Ferrell’s or Adam Sandler’s is that while they generally feel like a singularly weird person around mostly normal people, the characters in Friendship all feel like deeply weird people. They just happen to be around a person a thousand times weirder than them. Austin is the coolest guy ever in Craig’s eyes, but to us, it screams someone in a midlife crisis being performatively cool, down to being in a punk band. Even Tami is weird as she has an odd fixation on constantly talking about her firefighter ex-boyfriend in front of her husband.
“…the characters in Friendship all feel like deeply weird people.”
However, they’re both well-adjusted people when next to Craig repeatedly breaking into Austin’s house or trying to play-fight. The only exception to this would be a brief appearance by ITYSL fan-favourite Connor O’Malley, who can turn any regular line into the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard. His scene is one of several that had me in tears from laughing, hardest of all being a late-film sequence where Craig goes on his first drug trip. The payoff was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Even when the film goes through some of the requisite narrative beats, the way it gets from point A to point B is the weirdest possible route, and I loved every bit of it.
Friendship is the most I’ve laughed at in a theatre since Jackass Forever, but it’s certainly not a film not for everyone. If you’re not inclined to cringe-comedy or if Tim Robinson’s brand of absurdity is not on your wavelength, the movie will certainly grate on you within the first 15 minutes. But for long-time fans of ITYSL, it’s everything you could want out of a movie with Tim Robinson as the lead. Friendship is the type of film you can already envision flopping with mainstream audiences on its initial release but garnering an immediate cult following, destined to be endlessly quoted and clipped online.
