Film Review: 'Friendship' Is 'Fatal Attraction' For Weird Little Guys
If you haven’t heard of it, there’s a show on Netflix called I Think You Should Leave. There are three seasons, with six episodes each, clocking in around fifteen minutes. Co-created by and starring comedian Tim Robinson, the show employs deadpan, uncomfortable humor throughout each sketch, jumping quickly from one idea to the next. While some sketches don’t hit, the ones that do are genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I hold my sides from laughing so hard. There are some people I know who find it to be just as funny; the other half don’t understand why I would spend my time watching something that they don’t think is funny in the slightest. They don’t even crack a smile.
A24’s newest offering, Friendship, is a film in the same vein as I Think You Should Leave. There are moments of embarrassment for the movie’s characters that are skin-crawlingly uncomfortable and simultaneously hilarious. Like the show, there are some misses when it comes to the joke, but when they hit, it’s a reminder of why Robinson has acquired such a massive following in recent years with his absurdist humor. Some people will find this movie to be one of the funniest things they’ve ever seen in their lives; others will hate it. The creators know that, and they embrace it.
Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a socially awkward man in a marriage that seems to be at a transitional period. His wife (Kate Mara) beat cancer and has a new lease on life. His son (Jack Dylan Grazer) lacks interest in him. After discovering a package accidentally delivered to the wrong house, Craig walks across the street to deliver it and meets his new neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a local meteorologist who seems to be everything that Craig aspires to be. Austin knows how to explore an underground tunnel system beneath City Hall; he has a punk band; he’s on TV; he owns ancient artifacts and has cool anecdotes about them. Both of these men are completely insecure; the only difference is that one of them is better at putting up a facade.
After an uncomfortable encounter between Craig and his group of friends one evening, Austin tells Craig that he can’t continue their friendship. Craig’s interest in their friendship begins to turn into an obsession, leading him down paths that are increasingly agonizing to watch; you can’t help but cringe and laugh at the same time.
Robinson has excelled at this kind of humor for years, but he’s been able to showcase his writing and comedic abilities with movies like this. His character here is a parody of the guy that we all know - the guy that doesn’t have anything interesting about him, whose only defined by the things around him. He hears Austin playing Slipknot, so he starts playing Slipknot (“Yeah, I like punk!” he tells his wife and kid). Austin picks wild mushrooms in the forest, so he starts picking wild mushrooms in the forest. When he was a kid, he was most likely told that the way to be successful and have friends is to get a job in business and get money; he’s a marketing executive at a tech company, yet you can see he’s isolated from all of the other employees.
Friendship is an extended sketch comedy bit that grows increasingly absurd with each passing minute. It is “Fatal Attraction” for weird guys, and I mean that as a high compliment.
Release Date: May 5th, 2025
Rated: R (for language and some drug content)
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Directed by: Andrew DeYoung
Screenplay by: Andrew DeYoung
Produced by: Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Johnny Holland, Nick Weidenfeld
Starring: Tim Robinson, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grzer, Paul Rudd
