Friendship

Friendship is a fun black comedy about male bonding with a heavy dose of cringeworthy sequences which are hard to look away from as things keep getting worse for everyone involved. It's all built on the relatable desire to belong in a friend group and takes it to absurd extremes thanks to a main character who never knows the right thing to say in any situation. There's a nice unpredictability in seeing just how bad it gets too.

Tim Robinson is so perfectly cast it's impossible to imagine anyone else being able to handle this uncomfortable material as effortlessly as he does. He's incredibly comfortable in every scene that's heavy on the awkwardness and he never relents by constantly sinking further with occasionally really funny but consistently disastrous results. Paul Rudd is great by simultaneously leaning into and going against his natural likeability.

Andrew DeYoung's direction brings plenty of visual style through the lighting, suitably bleak look and a few surreal moments with the biggest highlight being the most mundane drug trip in cinema, sponsored by Subway. Andy Rydzewski's cinematography is creating meticulous framing from the first scene and Keegan DeWitt's score also stands out because its unusual sounds aren't the norm but certainly fits what this is going for.

It's easy to describe this movie to someone who has watched "I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE" tv show(with Tim Robinson). FRIENDSHIP is like a 100 minutes episode of this show, less insane/provocative than an average episode,also a bit more entertaining addressing to larger audiences.

However, it's very difficult to describe this to someone who hasn't watched Robinson's tv shows. One might think that it's something like a dark comedy(like THE CABLE GUY) and a satire about male friendship. Or a deconstruction of movies regarding male friendship.

Truth is, even this description doesn't even begin to portray the sheer insanity of this movie. The male friendship is just a pretext, an excuse for all this surrealistic spectacle. This is more Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí than "Cable guy". But even Bunuel's movies had a second layer and they had a meaning. FRIENDSHIP has zero meaning or moral lessons or an underlying purpose. This is not about about society, there are no messages here, nothing.

There is a reviewer here named "aciessi" and i think his review is absolutely to the point : "I imagine some people have a lot of trouble explaining Tim Robinson. I think I can. He is the new champion of anti-comedy. Anti-comedy is almost a performance art unto itself and would suggest a uniquely higher level of understanding of what is funny and what is not, and then taking what is not funny and making it funny. It feels almost accidental, but it isn't.".

This.

I liked it a lot, there were many hilarious scenes, for real i would like to watch a 4 hour movie of Robinson. However, this is definitely not for everyone. Many people will call it a bad movie, and i won't even argue. It's not about right and wrong, good taste in movies and bad taste. Tim Robinson's cinematic value " lies in the eyes of the beholder".

The obvious comparison is "I love you man," because of Rudd and some of the other narrative parallels, but I like to think of this as the origin story of the "dangerous nights I used to be a piece of $h!t" guy from I think you should leave.

Robinson strikes just the right balance between doing the things he's known for from ITYSL and Detroiters, and the kind of dark sadness that could only be depicted by someone who had a prior career in advertising (I say this as someone with a current career in advertising).

There's a real undercurrent of existential dread running from start to finish and in the end, they stick the landing on never really knowing what was reality vs fantasy.

It's a strong recommend from me, especially for those who enjoyed Robinson's previous projects, because make no mistake - while the supporting cast (primarily Mara and Rudd) anchors the reality - it's Robinson who sells the surreality required to tie it all together. 8/10.

At first glance, Friendship plays like it's gearing up to be a quirky indie comedy - awkward banter, strained smiles, and just enough charm to make you think you're in for a sad-sack buddy flick with heart. But then something shifts. Slowly. Quietly. And by the time the third act rolls around, you realize you're not watching a comedy at all. You're watching a slow-motion car wreck of emotional codependence and social decay - and you're in the passenger seat.

The film's real trick (and possibly its curse) is how it messes with your sympathy. I started off feeling sorry for Robinson's character - lonely, vulnerable, maybe a little pathetic. But as the story peeled back layers, that pity curdled into discomfort. Then resentment. Then something colder. And yet, by the end, I still wasn't sure if I hated him or just hated how much of him I recognized.

That emotional whiplash is probably the movie's greatest strength - and maybe its biggest obstacle. This is not a film that wants you to feel good. It wants you to squirm. It wants you to sit in the tension between wanting to help someone and realizing you might be feeding the very dysfunction you're trying to escape. That's powerful. It's also exhausting.

The writing is sharp, but it doesn't hold your hand. The pacing is deliberate (read: slow), the tone slippery, and the morality murky. You can tell this film wants to be part of the post-Anora wave - intimate, raw, and morally complex - but it lacks Anora's clarity and brutal elegance. Instead, Friendship smudges the lines until everything feels a little too fuzzy to fully land.

If Friendship is about anything, it might be this: the strange, sad reasons we keep toxic people in our lives. Loneliness. Obligation. Habit. Fear of what comes after letting go. It's a film that doesn't provide answers - just a long, uncomfortable mirror.

I give it a 6.5 out of 10. It's well-made. It's interesting. It hits hard. But it also left me more overwrought than enlightened. There's value in that, sure - but I'm not in a hurry to go through it again.

On the one hand, it's got moments of genuine hilarity and ingenuity. Rare these days in movie theaters - it seems only stand-up has any guts and originality. I laughed hard in places and so did the first-weekend LA crowd. On the other hand, the story is without much momentum and lacks a sense of inevitability. Feels random and without clear purpose/meaning. As though the whole thing were a series of sketches strung together with no driving thematic goal. Another way of putting it is that it does not get more interesting as it goes. But the acting and casting is superb. Very well directed. Bravo!