Friendship is a strange movie, and it is strange for a couple of reasons. It sticks out as something of an anomaly in a world that seems to have abandoned the comedy film in its purest form. In the last two weeks I have seen The Naked Gun, The Roses, and now Friendship buck the trend by being something audiences have really lacked in recent years: a comedy film intent almost solely on making you laugh.
From its opening moment, which places Tim Robinson’s Craig out of focus in the outer of the frame, Friendship is hysterically funny. It doesn’t discriminate in how it achieves its laughs – there are sight gags, there are literal jokes in the dialogue, and a whole lot of visual comedy from Tim Robinson’s performance. His awkward, manic energy crackles throughout the film as he blindly fumbles through one social interaction after another.
Paul Rudd plays Austin, Craig’s new neighbour, with a knowing dose of homage to another of his iconic comedy roles: Brian Fantana from 2004’s now-classic Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. You could almost see his character as a version of Fantana who left the San Diego Channel 4 news team and settled down, before finding himself presenting the weather on local television news. Next to just about any other character, he would be seen as the free-wheeling, care-free live wire, and yet he pales in comparison to the unpredictable energy of Tim Robinson.
The most admirable quality I see in Friendship is the way that it manages to engage meaningfully in the subtext of the film without ever abandoning its first mandate of laughter. The “dramdies” of the 2010s and onwards seem to have conditioned audiences to never expect to be able to have their cake and eat it, like you have to substitute laughs to earn the right to be earnest. Friendship is a perfect example of a film that achieves both without ever compromising either; it is a riot from start to finish, but has plenty of meat on the bone to take home and chew on later.
I rewatched Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption a couple of weeks ago, and found myself thinking a lot about the way Tim Robbins described it as “a uniquely
non-sexual love story between two men.” Friendship isn’t necessarily the first film you would think of in relation to The Shawshank Redemption, and yet it does explore the very same quandary of platonic male friendships – or, perhaps more accurately, the cultural stigmas that often stand in the way. Craig is initially thrilled at the prospect of meeting another male companion or buddy, and yet almost as soon as they connect he is more concerned with the social niceties than he is with any genuine connection they have.
Did I say the right thing? Are we allowed to do this? What is my wife going to think? Does Austin really like me? Is he hanging out with me just to be polite?
These are all questions that anybody with even the smallest tendencies towards social awkwardness are intimately familiar, and Friendship takes these inner insecurities and inflates them to absurd extremes through the unique comedic identity of Tim Robinson. Where most of us would deal with those internal questions by, I don’t know, hesitating to text somebody for fear of coming across needy or clingy, Craig’s version of this involves sabotaging careers, home invasions, hilariously mundane drug trips, firearms, and mis-judged trips through abandoned city substructures. The subtextual truth underneath the comic absurdities is very real, though.
We are living through a pandemic of loneliness that will become endemic if the tech companies who dictate our lives achieve their end goals. People are finding it harder and harder to connect with people. Rates of reported loneliness amongst young people in particular are high enough to be considered a public health concern, and the trajectory of public discourse is driving us further and further towards isolation, dissociation and tribalisation. If there is a central ideology at the heart of Friendship to be interpreted, it is one of vulnerability and openness. It is that even though sincerity and earnest connection has been labelled as “cringe,” or that expressing a desire for platonic connection has been labelled a sign of weakness by the culture designed by our technological oligarchs, we still have to try. There is genuine connection to be found on the other side of the cringe, and that is where everything true and worthwhile begins.
I suspect that many viewers will see Friendship and take the side of Austin, happy to dismiss Craig as a psycho. But I think Friendship does something that is radically countercultural, which is actually ask us to empathise with Craig. We don’t go to the extremes he does in the film (I would hope), but we all experience that longing for platonic connection mixed with the fear of overstepping. Friendship is funny as hell, but beneath the relentless punchlines and gags there is a genuine plea to reengage with each other.
As Craig says multiple times in the film: “I’m on the edge of life, and the view is gorgeous.”
Friendship will be available with a HBO Max Subscription
Jonty Cornford writes about film and narrative on his Substack “Postcards from the Abyss.”
