Tim Robinson, left, and Paul Rudd in a scene from Friendship.The Associated Press
Friendship
Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung
Starring Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd and Kate Mara
Classification 14A; 97 minutes
Opens in Toronto and Vancouver May 16, across the country May 23
Critic’s Pick
Craig Waterman is a normal enough guy. He has a solid upper-middle-class job, a sprawling home, a beautiful florist wife (Kate Mara), a dutiful teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) and a cool-as-hell new best friend next door named Austin (Paul Rudd). Scratch the suburban surface, though, and Craig’s life starts to sour. His company develops apps to become as addictive as possible. His wife, Tami, has just survived a bout of cancer, and she seems to be constantly re-examining her options. Son Steven is a little too affectionate with his mom. And Austin? After a supremely awkward get-together one night, the pair’s friendship is unceremoniously kiboshed.
But the biggest clue that not everything is right with Craig is the fact that he is played by Tim Robinson. A (brief) veteran of Saturday Night Live and currently the evil-genius mastermind behind Netflix’s intensely absurd sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, Robinson cannot help but project an air of deep discomfort every time he graces the screen. His presence suggests a walking time bomb of social anxiety, one tick away from either emotional implosion or uncontrollable rage. Every time that Craig opens his mouth, either to spout something innocuous or more off-kilter (“There’s a new Marvel out that’s supposed to be nuts!”), Robinson pushes the moment right past the edge of normalcy. Everything just feels … wrong.
Which is what makes writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship such a terrifyingly funny ride. A long-time director of small-screen comedy (PEN15, Our Flag Means Death), DeYoung seizes upon Robinson’s intentionally unnerving aura – all pronounced eye tics, awkward shuffles and a resting facial expression that is at once harmless and deeply upsetting, especially whenever the spell breaks and the actor’s vocal chords explode with anger – and proceeds to craft an entire world around it. The trick to unlocking Friendship, which often plays like 2009’s I Love You, Man (also starring Rudd) meets Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, is that you genuinely have no idea where it is going to go next. It is as hilarious as it is frightening.
The film’s unpredictable, almost primordial humour truly starts to burble up once Craig’s life begins to contour itself to the character’s own skewed sense of self. Tami mysteriously disappears during an impromptu couple’s tour through the town’s sewer system. The local TV station where Austin works as a weatherman – he is desperately trying to move up to mornings from the evening broadcast – reveals itself to be a shocking cesspool of craven backstabbing. And every corner of Craig’s Anywhere, U.S.A., starts to reveal more insidious corners, including the cellphone store that operates a hallucinogenic speakeasy of sorts in the back. (This particular setting also builds to one of the greatest quick-cut jokes in years, a moment edited to crisp perfection by Sophie Corra.)
While Friendship no doubt rewards devoted viewers of I Think You Should Leave, the film is far more than a stitched-together series of sketches. As Craig and Austin’s relationship leapfrogs from BFFs to grudge-holders to something more venomous, DeYoung picks away the scabs of modern masculinity with an increasing fervour. But the more queasy the film becomes – in both story and style, with the director preferring unusually moody natural light and nerve-rattling zooms – the funnier it gets.
This might not have been the case were Robinson’s co-stars not so acutely on his particular wavelength. Mara, as the only woman to appear throughout the entire film, is enigmatically erratic as Tami, especially once the character starts to take some hard looks at whom she’s married to. And Rudd rather courageously subverts his ageless good-guy persona, playing a cracked-mirror version of his affable buffoon Brian Fantana from that other classic comedy about an unnerved weatherman and his pals, Anchorman. In many ways, the uproarious-but-acquired-taste comedy of Friendship works exactly like Fantana’s infamous Sex Panther cologne: Sixty per cent of the time, it works every time.
