In the comedy of Tim Robinson, one of two things is usually true: You have one of Robinson’s many characters—oftentimes some form of sad-sack everyman—enduring the perils of a world he doesn’t recognize, or the mundane universe we all acknowledge as normal is interrupted by Robinson as a man for whom even the simplest of human interactions seems helplessly complex and ripe for chaos. This setup has worked comedic miracles over the course of three seasons of his sketch show I Think You Should Leave, his woefully underseen sitcom Detroiters with Sam Richardson, and a handful of guest appearances elsewhere over the years. The question Andrew DeYoung asks with his directorial debut Friendship is whether this formula can be sustained over the course of a feature film—whether Robinson, perhaps the most unlikely television comedy star of the last decade, can become an even more improbable movie star.
The answer is largely yes, and it happens in ways you expect, and many you might not. Perhaps the best decision DeYoung makes in his tight, off-kilter screenplay is to never really commit fully in answering whether it’s Robinson—here playing painfully average patriarch Craig—who’s the true chaos agent or whether the world around him is to blame for the insanity that infects every aspect of the Friendship universe. Early on, all appearances would point toward Craig’s innocence as a hapless office drone who just wants to scroll on his phone in his favorite chair and maybe catch the latest Marvel, which is supposed to be nuts. Of course, this being Robinson, any normality is relative and, even early on, plenty of Robinsonisms shine through: erratic speech patterns, stumbling physical comedy, a healthy dose of yelling, the potato-brown palette of his clothes he buys from Ocean View Dining, a boutique store that also sells food.
However well Craig performs the everyman bit, though, it’s clear from the moment he meets Paul Rudd’s Austin, a local weatherman and smooth-talking hotshot, that his valiant attempts at mirroring and masking are just that. The harder he tries to fit in with Austin’s group of guy friends, the clearer it seems that Craig fits nowhere, his desperation worn like a thick flop of sweat. “You’re smart, you have a good job, there’s nothing to be nervous about. Just be yourself. You’re a freakin’ prince,” mutters Craig to himself moments before definitely proving those words to be woefully untrue.
That isn’t to say, however, that Austin is necessarily cool and normal in anything other than comparison to Craig. He may be better adjusted, as is Craig’s wife Tami (Kate Mara) and son (Jack Dylan Grazer), but DeYoung is sure to make it clear that Craig’s peculiarities, as persistent as they may be, are not occurring in a vacuum. From the outset, there’s an almost Twilight Zone level of “is everyone else in on this?” buzzing around Craig in every scene. Even before he engages in a blissful evening of palling around with Austin, he must first witness—with Robinson’s patented wide-eyed raccoon stare—his son kissing his wife on the lips, one among a deluge of emasculation rituals the film forces upon him. This ramps up even further as the film enters its second half, which relies on narrative turns that are never quite met with the response of living, breathing humans, but remains part and parcel with the world DeYoung has managed to create.
What’s fascinating by the movie's end is the realization of just how much Friendship is truly Robinson’s movie, and his alone. While Rudd is predictably excellent, this is far from a two-hander, and the appearance of some of Robinson's frequent collaborators makes the whole thing feel like an extension of his ongoing comedy project (this is highlighted by a late-film appearance from Conner O'Malley as a character insisting, apropos of nothing, that we never should have left Iraq). To DeYoung’s credit, he seems willing and able to tease every last bit of comedy and distorted pathos from Robinson’s best bits, somehow maintaining the bizarre tone of a single sketch through the film’s 100-minute runtime. Friendship might not make Robinson a comedy titan on par with his co-star, but Craig immediately enters the pantheon of the frustrated, befuddled, manchild archetype that has become Robinson’s forte.
