Tim Robinson brings his signature brand of cringe to the big screen with Friendship, a surreal comedy that’s both uncomfortable and amusing — and that’s exactly the point. It’s a feature-length anxiety spiral, stitched together with awkwardness, emotional desperation, and moments so bizarre you may find yourself laughing to cope.
Directed and co-written by Andrew DeYoung (PEN15), the film follows Craig (Robinson), a socially inept suburban husband who latches onto his (in his eyes) cool new neighbour Austin (Paul Rudd) like a man starved of human connection. What begins as an innocent package delivery spirals into obsession, self-destruction, and sewer-based bonding sessions. Naturally.
If you’ve seen I Think You Should Leave, you’ll have a good idea of what kind of character Robinson is playing here. Craig is another emotionally stunted oddball, prone to tone-deaf outbursts and a slow, agonising descent into social self-destruction. Robinson doubles down with a full-on character study that somehow finds both humour and horror in one man’s desperate need for male companionship.
It’s kind of like a sketch-to-feature leap, and it mostly works. I found it to be a smart and satisfyingly unhinged extension of Robinson’s comedy. Yes, it leans hard into his persona and may feel overextended for those less inclined toward his style. But the film holds a clear (if chaotic) throughline: watching a man unravel in the pursuit of being liked. Robinson’s comedy thrives on discomfort and emotional extremity — a balance that can definitely test patience, but also gives the film its uniqueness.
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DeYoung’s direction and screenplay complement the comedy’s normal-yet-off-kilter tone, with filmmaking that feels grounded but quietly bizarre. There’s a strange rhythm to it all — jarring but amusing transitions, an effective use of silence, and an offbeat score that enhances the unease. I appreciated how the film’s style mirrors Craig’s warped sense of normalcy. It’s a world just slightly tilted out of place — close enough to reality to sting, but strange enough to laugh at.
There are moments where the absurdity teeters into full-blown nonsense — Craig licking psychedelic toads in a phone shop, or stealing a gold-plated pistol after a break-in that’s treated like a casual drop-in. At times, I wasn’t even sure whether I was meant to laugh or feel something more existentially bleak. But that ambiguity gives the film an odd resonance. Beneath the chaos lies something observant about social anxiety, male loneliness, and the painful rituals of adulthood.
Paul Rudd, playing it straight but lightly absurd — almost like a less ridiculous version of his Anchorman character, Brian Fantana — proves a good counterbalance. Kate Mara, as Craig’s long-suffering wife, gets less to do, but her presence grounds the story and further reminds us how far Craig has drifted from reality.
Friendship won’t be for everyone. It’s aggressively awkward and purposefully alienating. It’s the kind of comedy that forces you to squirm more than laugh outright. But for those on its wavelength, like I found myself to be, it’s both an amusing descent into madness and a weirdly moving portrait of one man’s doomed search for connection.
It’s also, undeniably, a Tim Robinson film. Which is to say: you’ll either love it, or want to crawl under a table.
