Mining Robinson's unique delivery for everything it's worth, Friendship is a painfully funny dark comedy.
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As regular readers and listeners might already know, I'm a big fan of Tim Robinson. Specifically his Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave. While I've never been big on cringe comedy, Robinson's over-the-top delivery and scenarios break through that awkward barrier by, to borrow a term from Hearts, shooting the moon into such absurdity that it's no longer serious. Which works really really well in a sketch comedy show with 20 some minute episodes where almost no sketch runs longer than 5 minutes. But can you extend that into feature length comedy? You know where Robinson has to be a named character for about 100 minutes and presumably has relationships with everyone around him. If Friendship is any indication...yes...yes you can.
The Setup
Robinson plays Craig, a salesman whose life is stable but boring. But when a local celebrity moves in down the street and invites Craig over, the nighttime weatherman named Austin, Craig's fixation on his newfound friend may send him down a dark path...
One of the best compliments I can give a filmmaker is that they "get" what they're going for. Especially if you're both the writer and the director. And the idea here was clearly to capture that awkward I Think You Should Leave Energy and channel it through a socially awkward man trying to make and keep a friend (something he clearly has never been able to do before).
And writer/director Andrew DeYoung gets it. If you do some initial research you might say "well of course, he wrote the part for Robinson." Which is fair, but that's not all of it. I'll get into what Robinson brings to the table, and why his comedic sensibilities are so crucial to the film working as well as it does, but DeYoung does a great job of creating a heightened and silly version of reality.
There's little things like the decor in all of the houses that looks like a combination of 70s and 80s tacky or the soundtrack that varies from modern heavy metal to eighties synth pop and back again. And then there's bigger things like how everyone else besides Robinson's Craig behaves including strange friendly bonding activities and the "if it wasn't produced by A24 I'd think he was mocking them, but then again maybe he is" cinematography that emphasizes low natural lighting and deep greens.
Hell Paul Rudd plays our would-be friend for Robinson's Craig and he more or less acts like his Anchorman character but weirder (and even changed his character's named to make sure there wasn't confusion). Sidenote, I love Paul Rudd just going on an A24 journey after the Marvel stuff. He's got a weirdos heart deep down and I love any chance he gets to let it fly.
It's all an intentionally weird environment before Robinson opens his mouth. The visuals say serious drama, everything else says surreal comedy. And then Robinson speaks and now we've got a movie length I Think You Should Leave sketch.
The thing I love about Robinson is that he has an inherent understanding of scene dynamics and his comedic persona. We'll start with the persona. Robinson's comedic persona is an obliviously awkward idiot with little to no self-control. Admittedly a lot of cringe comedy people shoehorn this into "guy says politically incorrect thing with a smile on his face" or doesn't get that his joke didn't land.
By contrast Robinson acts like an alien inside a human skin who's constantly trying to figure out what the hell he's doing or experiencing normal human emotions for the first time...while also trying to preserve his own ego. All with no idea as to how he's coming across in the moment (that's the cringe).
For scene dynamics, Robinson has a solid grasp of the expected tenor and tone of individual scenes. And creates tension by inverting them as hard as humanly possible. So take a scene where two friends are talking. It's an easy conversation. No one is reacting too big to anything. And then, for a seemingly innocuous reason, Robinson will give an inhuman level of reaction. Even if the general tenor is something you'd expect, it's never this big or this level of silly.
So the tension in the scene breaks because this isn't someone being awkward, it's someone being a complete loon. Put them together and you've got a protagonist that may not be likable, but he is hilarious.
So is the movie about anything? Oh right. While the general idea of the movie is mostly to get a bunch of laughs through the lens of a dark indie comedy, I do think the movie captures a few real things. Like how surreal and anxiety inducing it can be to change your life. How thrilling it can be to make a new friend and how desperate it can feel to try and ingratiate yourself with a new group, especially as an adult.
There are an awful lot of guys like Craig who probably need a friend, and also need more socialization to be better, but are also a giant pile of weird you might have to wade through to do it. They're also probably painfully oblivious about the spots they're messing up in their immediate family despite the obvious signs. I can't say I say myself in this movie, but I think someone could and realize...maybe I need some friends before I become a giant weirdo.
The Verdict: A Perfect Blend of Material and Performer
Mining Robinson's unique delivery for everything it's worth, Friendship is a painfully funny dark comedy. 8/10
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