Friendship Review

Friendship opens in theaters Friday, May 9. This review is based on a screening at the 2025 SXSW Film and Television Festival.

Tim Robinson’s character in Friendship is so perfect for his comedic persona, it’s incredible that he didn’t write it himself. It was written for him, to be clear; director Andrew DeYoung said in an interview last fall that he sent the screenplay to Robinson with a note that said he wanted Robinson for the part, and that he planned to shoot it like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. (More on that later.) Friendless, clueless, and prone to fits of frustrated rage, Craig Waterman is like a character from Robinson’s cringe-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, with about as much depth and equal capacity for laughs.

Craig’s neighbor Austin is a perfect fit for Paul Rudd, too. Austin is a weatherman for a local news station, with a thick mustache, a glorious head of hair, a hot wife, and a successful local garage band. Austin has lots of friends, and likes to have them over for beers on a Friday night. Austin represents a certain type of quietly confident guy, the kind who collects vinyl and drinks craft brews and wears cool jeans that fit him just right. Craig, meanwhile, is neither confident nor quiet. He works for a company that specializes in making apps more addictive, is always holding an awkwardly oversized beverage, and buys all of his clothes from a company called Ocean View Dining.

The only person who can stand Craig is his wife Tami (Kate Mara) – and that comes and goes, frankly. He was the safe choice, a stable presence for Tami and their son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). Even so, Craig is inadequate as a provider: A running visual gag involves Tami trying to jam large floral arrangements into a tiny smart car, because Craig can’t afford to buy her a bigger one. He’s inadequate in a lot of ways, actually, and much of the humor in Friendship revolves around Craig’s metaphorical, feature-length cuckolding. His manhood is continually undercut by Tami, by Austin, by the guys at work, by Tami’s sexy firefighter ex, and even by Steven, who has two girlfriends and kisses his mom on the mouth.

Craig reacts like a Tim Robinson character, which is to say that he takes it until he explodes in a fit of impotent rage. Robinson’s comedy is all about inappropriate reactions to ridiculous scenes: Think of the I Think You Should Leave sketch with Tim Heidecker as a condescending, gazpacho-craving boyfriend who populates a game of Celebrity with the un-guessable names of ancient jazz musicians. And that style manifests from Friendship’s opening moments, at a support-group meeting where Tami says that her cancer has been in remission for a year now (this is never mentioned again, by the way) but that there are certain things that still bother her, like wondering if she’ll ever have an orgasm again. Then it’s Craig’s turn to share. “I’m orgasming just fine,” he says.

From there, we pivot to Craig’s burgeoning relationship with Austin, who’s new to the neighborhood and very generous towards the childlike idiot next door. They have a few “good hangs,” exploring the tunnels underneath their small town and foraging for wild mushrooms in the nearby woods. Then Craig humiliates himself at boys’ night, prompting Austin to politely tell him that he’s no longer interested in being bros. This happens a half-hour into this 100-minute movie, making its title somewhat misleading: Most of Friendship is about Craig’s freakout over being friend-dumped, rather than the friendship itself.

A series of escalating absurdist scenarios follow, the funniest of which sees Craig lying on the floor in the stockroom of a cell phone store and licking a toad an 18-year-old named T-Boy (don’t ask) tells him will take him on a mind-bending psychedelic journey. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out where Craig’s mind's eye takes him, but it’s silly and unexpected and gives Robinson the opportunity to have one of his signature tantrums. The surrealist touches in DeYoung’s filmmaking are minimal, but he is fond of the evocative push-ins and Steadicam tracking shots favored by his professed inspiration Anderson, an elevated directing style that feels like a tongue-in-cheek bit in a comedy like Friendship.

Rudd basically disappears after the first act, and Mara literally disappears into the sewers for a few scenes. Robinson’s frequent collaborator (and fellow chronicler of brain-rotted 21st-century guys) Conner O’Malley shows up for a cameo, standing on a chair and ranting about how “we should still be in Afghanistan.” Robinson loses his phone in a puddle, smashes another one against a wall, and ruins several pairs of OVD khakis. His physical-comedy instincts are impeccable, even when the whole thing starts to feel repetitive after a while. (For comparison’s sake: Friendship runs about as long as a full season of I Think You Should Leave.)

The overall effect is of a series of interconnected comedy sketches on the loose themes of manhood and male bonding, which are hilarious if you vibe with Robinson’s style of humor and insufferable if you don’t. Friendship got big laughs at SXSW, leaving a handful of Robinson naysayers alienated and stone-faced in their theater seats. Sounds like the premise for a Tim Robinson sketch.