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That One Weird Friend

I was very surprised to learn that Andrew DeYoung has never written or directed for I Think You Should Leave, Tim Robinson’s brilliantly surreal and deranged sketch comedy show on Netflix. Because his movie, Friendship -which stars Robinson, feels cut from the same cloth. Perhaps some of that came from Robinson’s presence and the film’s script being reoriented to his sensibilities, as has been the case for comedy stars in the past. But it’s tone too just feels perfectly in-line with many of those baffling sketches of awkward guys who just can’t let go of their hang-ups and foibles.
It’s also fitting that the film co-stars Paul Rudd, as its premise is something of a dark mirror to I Love You, Man, one of the better Judd Apatow knock-offs of the 2000s that also featured Rudd as a charming and likeable idyllic best friend. In both cases he is the straight man of the pair, but Friendship applies a filter warped in male loneliness, insecurity, co-dependency, and obsession. It’s a wild time.
Robinson plays Craig, a terminally dull marketing executive who has seemingly no personal interests and does nothing with his time. On the encouragement of his wife Tami (Kate Mara), a florist who has recently recovered from a battle with cancer, he follows up on an invite for a beer with the new neighbour Austin (Rudd), a meteorologist, and the pair strike up a pretty quick friendship that begins to have a positive effect in both their lives. But Craig’s intensity and desperation becomes too much around Austin’s other friends and after a few faux pas, Austin tries to end their relationship, which only brings out darker and more chaotic tendencies in Craig.
The film is structured like a very long sketch from Robinson’s show, with its weirdness in the air at the start that just escalates through the run of the movie and the various scenarios it poses for Robinson to infect with his particular unpredictable kind of social awkwardness. After he sucker punches Austin through a ‘friendly’ boxing match as a way of asserting himself among Austin’s other friends, his apology takes the form of stuffing a bar of soap in his mouth. When he senses his proposed marketing ploy isn’t going over well with a local political client, he lashes out and viscerally denigrates the man. The moving parts effect one another, but a lot of scenes play out too as their own little vignettes that feel both perfectly consistent and isolated -the toast scene a good example of what could be its own little comic skit of an inferiority complex- Craig’s manic behaviour driving all of them.
And though he is a graceless buffoon, there is something relatable in Craig’s need for some kindred relationship to fill out his life -Austin negates an emptiness there that is too overpowering to him; and that after the friendship “ends” he endeavours to find with Tami and his son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), as well as his barely spoken-to colleagues at work, to incredibly poor results. He is of course a very neglectful husband and father and a vacant co-worker, and these efforts can be seen for the shallow self-gratification they are -he even tries to mimic Austin’s tendencies directly given he has no original ideas or personality of his own. This when he's not shamelessly trying to make himself look cool for Austin -buying a drum set so he can be in his band. Pathetic, but still pitiable.
These characteristics, along with the comic visual language and sense of timing displayed, are obviously in line with the show. But what makes this movie notably different from any sketch is the dimensionality to the characters around Craig, particularly Austin and Tami. They are foils no doubt, but they are played with an interiority and authenticity that just further alienates Craig and his complexes, emphasizing more than any sketch could, the genuine trials of inhabiting a world with a Tim Robinson character. By design, Tami's story plays out in the background, her concerns are insignificant to Craig's sphere of constant distance and distraction. They feel extremely mismatched, the pair introduced through a support group meeting for cancer survivors, where Craig is ignorant to the emotional support she has been receiving from her ex Devon (Josh Segarra) -someone she has clearly been reconnecting with in the absence of Craig's emotional availability. Her dismay and dissatisfaction is communicated strongly to anyone but him -he being woefully inept at even basic spousal consideration, as a mid-point disaster, his response to it, and a cathartic outburst from Connor O'Malley make clear.
The far greater subject of his infatuation, Austin, is also drawn as a believable person in relief to Craig -strange though he is in his own way. In fact Rudd plays quite well Austin's code-switching in his personal and professional lives, thus emphasizing the taboo in Craig's efforts to breach them. But though Austin comes to tire of Craig and his obsessiveness, there is a curious connection between them, mutually insecure and under pressure. It is their responses that diverge, but they are nonetheless a more interesting and weirdly compatible pair than one might expect from this premise.
For its intentional foreboding atmosphere, pre-empting a great demented climax, the film is very funny in very inventive ways. There are a lot of effective non-sequitur jokes and the episodic structure gives license for some very fun comic beats. For example, the culmination of Craig's attempts to cope with his stress through arranging a drug deal with a mobile phone technician makes for one of the funniest uses of product placement I've seen in a movie in a while -also a low-key great Marvel joke, which DeYoung demonstrates an affinity for. And Robinson just has pitch-perfect delivery when it comes to this very distinct kind of absurdity. He is the master of his chaotic art in the same way that Robin Williams and Jim Carrey were of theirs. Certainly, he'd be a star in an era where comedy movies mattered.
As much as Friendship does not belong to such an era, it is a good comedy worth seeking out, cogent for all its insanity. In a way, it does tap into that male loneliness crisis we continually hear about, and offers satirical comment on how friendship, particularly between men, is defined and expressed in today's world. Mostly though, it's a strong showcase for Tim Robinson, bolstered by Mara and Rudd, and a narrative and stylistic sensibility geared towards his strengths. We appreciate a weird Friendship.

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