Have you ever texted someone and never received a response? Well, A24’s comedy of bad manners, Friendship, taps into that frustration … with a power drill. Director Andrew DeYoung’s exploration of broken masculinity and middle-aged isolation manages to be the funniest — and the cringiest — film of the year. Its rubber-faced star, Tim Robinson, of the Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, immerses himself in the role of Craig Waterman with such swashbuckling ease and authenticity, you’ll rifle through your past wondering if you ever behaved like him around your peers. Hopefully, the answer is a resounding “No!”
DeYoung, who also wrote the script, discards sentiment, earnestness, and relatability in favor of situational absurdity, a bold artistic choice that nearly derails the entire undertaking. Yet he keeps us wholly engaged by dropping Craig down several rungs of weirdo hell while pulling off colossal gags. What’s truly surprising is how intelligent this bizarre journey turns out to be.
If the Farrelly brothers collaborated with horror/dark comedy filmmaker Ari Aster (Hereditary), the result would have a similar texture and mood as Friendship. Tonally, it lands somewhere between a surrealist satire and weighty character study; it’s neither, but employs elements of both. The film opens with a support group for cancer survivors, where Tami (Kate Mara) tearfully shares how grateful she is to be cancer-free for a year, although she admittedly misses orgasms, which she hasn’t experienced in a while. Craig (Robinson) immediately interrupts and says that he’s not only proud of his wife but has had “a lot of orgasms!” The roomful of people just stare at him with their jaws practically on the floor. From the outset it’s obvious that Craig cares more about how he’s perceived than anything else, but he also couldn’t read a room if he had a map.
On the surface, Craig is your typical suburban husband. He works at a tech firm that’s intent on keeping users addicted to their app; his clothes are all manufactured by the same company; he loves “sick” Marvel movies, demanding that his house remain a “spoiler-free” zone; and he makes a spectacle of himself by tiptoeing down the hallways of his office with hot coffee filled to the brim. One day, the couple receives a package that’s meant for the new neighbors down the street. When Craig knocks on their door and Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd) answers, replete with a handlebar mustache and the shaggy bearing of a retired rock star, it’s love at first sight. At least, for Craig.
Laugh at him all you want; he’s just trying to be like you.
Unlike our hero, Austin is handsome, laid-back, and charming. As the local weatherman with the requisite charm, Austin fronts a bar band at night, has a tight group of friends, and shows Craig cool places, like some abandoned sewer tunnels. But while he’s initially charmed by his neighbor’s reverence, Austin quickly becomes disturbed by Craig’s erratic behavior. After he pulls the plug on their budding friendship, Craig plummets down a wormhole of confusion, depression, and psychosis. His fall from grace includes meltdowns, cops, and a psychedelic trip induced by licking the underside of an exotic toad. It’s the strangest, most unexpected trip you’ll experience in movies this year.
Robinson portrays Craig with such childlike sincerity that we can’t help but sympathize with him, which isn’t easy, since he’s not quite “socially viable.” There are moments when you’ll literally cover your eyes as he inserts himself into breezy situations with the suavity of a backwoods serial killer. In one particularly queasy scene, he chews on a bar of soap in front of Austin and his pals as he whimpers, “I’m sorrrrry,” a form of penance for screwing up their evening. Throughout, the movie keeps its distance from Craig as he stumbles into yet another chaotic situation, turning the wince meter up to 11. DeYoung’s script intelligently never tells us how to feel, which forces us to confront our own feelings, which aren’t as cut and dry as you might think. You’re about to enter the Twilight Zone, where the protagonist isn’t just an outlier but a reflective mirror of their environment.
Even if the movie drags at times, since it’s at the mercy of its episodic narrative, DeYoung manages to create a mounting dread straight out of an Adrian Lyne thriller. He also inserts disorienting sequences, in which the characters stop and study a flower or stare out a window, creating an existential interplay with the audience. These introspective moments are completely at odds with the film’s surface, where people can’t wait to see the next Marvel movie, drink beers in their garage, or prefer green-tinted drum sets since they’re reminiscent of the Seventies. Life seems to coast on these bland platitudes, yet everyone accepts them because that’s what they’ve been offered. Craig, on the other hand, reacts to these normalized tropes with varying degrees of paranoia and anxiety.
Don’t be mistaken, however, Craig isn’t a rebel. He’s simply been locked out of the greater paradigm, which he wants to be a part of. At one point, you realize the movie’s target isn’t really Craig but these hollow, masculine constructs we’ve invested in without question. Austin, wonderfully played by Rudd, isn’t above being a slave to them as well. In this world, we’re all hypocrites. Craig just happens to be a sacrificial lamb to our collective insecurities and faux pas. Laugh at him all you want; he’s just trying to be like you.
Despite a few shrug-worthy scenes that interrupt the movie’s flow, this is one hell of a metaphysical ride. Expecting little more than a few laughs, I ended up ruminating about the plasticity of the world and how we silly humans relate to it. This is comedy at its best: incisive, uncomfortable, insatiably funny, and cutting. After leaving the theater, there was a moment when I imagined Craig Waterman and Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle sitting in the stands of an arena, having a beer and watching life as if it were a ridiculous, redundant game. ❖
Chad Byrnes has been a film critic for the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice for six years. He lives in Los Angeles.