FRIENDSHIP

Imagine if Cable Guy was updated with a heavy dose of subtle adult swim-style humor but told from the perspective of Jim Carey’s Chip Douglas. I know that sounds like a cheap description but it’s pretty accurate. To be clear - Friendship has everything that appeals to me specifically. Surreality, dark humor, ominous music and random scenes of randomness. Tim Robinson is also someone who can do wrong in my book for the most part. But when you put everything together you get an uneven movie that sometimes comes off as random and surreal for the sake of being random and surreal. Most of us like pizza, hamburgers and tacos but they don’t all need to be served at the same time or mixed together in the same dish. It’s like - I enjoyed this movie but I was also very disappointed. Are we making a slightly awkward yet genuine film about late period male friendship or a series of adult swim-style sketches strung together in the form of a feature film. I’m not saying both things can’t coexist but in the case of Friendship it doesn’t completely work.

This actually exposes why something like Cable Guy works and other films don’t. From start to finish, Cable Guy commits to the tone. And as silly as it gets sometimes, there’s nothing cynical about it. Friendship can’t seem to commit to a tone. The whole movie feels like it was made with a mean-spirited smirk instead of an honest smile.


I keep bringing up Cable Guy because there are a lot of the same beats in both films. Tim Robinson’s obsessiveness in the movie mirrors Jim Carrey. There are also a lot of similar moments.

A friendship breakup scene

The Cable Guy / 

Friendship

A scene where our characters end up in jail

The Cable Guy / Friendship

And similar endings involving the police

The Cable Guy / Friendship

Friendship certainly delves in to some of the topics I was hoping for. I’ve never had this problem myself, but making friends in your late 30s/early 40s can be difficult. Regardless of gender. As an only child, friendship has always been a fascinating concept to me. Despite the stereotypes, only children take their friendships very seriously. Our friends are the closest thing we have to siblings outside of cousins.

In the film Tim Robinson plays “Craig” - a socially awkward middle aged dad coasting through life with no friends. He’s befriended by Paul Rudd’s “Austin” but they soon learn they aren’t a good fit. Craig has a hard time accepting this and it sets off a series of toxic events. If Friendship had been just that, it would have worked. The problem is the movie injects too many moments of random surreal humor. Now…maybe this works for others but it kept taking me out of the movie. Had the type of humor shown in the movie been spaced out a lot more it would have been successful. But it’s too up and down. We get a genuine moment that’s quickly ruined by some Tim & Eric-type gag. I feel really bad saying this because I love Tim Robinson, I Think You Should Leave, Tim & Eric, Connor O’Malley, etc. But there’s a time and a place for everything and that wasn’t taken in to consideration here.

Another thing that bothered me about this movie is that it straddles the line between the A24 aesthetic (which is very much a thing) and a Safdie brothers movie. Ominous music, weird edits, long tense zoom-ins, etc. which is essentially a double negative considering the Safdie brothers are closely associated with A24.
This is just the opinion of one man. Perhaps this is me being selfish and self-centered because I didn’t get the movie I was expecting. I’ll certainly revisit this because as forced as the humor can be - this movie is layered and worthy of a fair critique.

SLACK BAY

“Eat the rich” or some variation of poor people uprising against or just straight up murdering or burning down “the establishment” has been a plot-point in film since damn near day one. And if it isn’t eating the rich - it’s an outside force disturbing the peace of a seemingly happy privileged family (Teorema/Sitcom, Funny Games, etc aren’t “eat the rich”, but their definitely adjacent). In my personal opinion, Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay is one of the few examples of how absurd and sometimes fake that can sound. To be clear - I’m not caping for rich people or the establishment, but at the end of the day most people aren’t about that revolutionary life (myself included). It certainly sounds hot but at the end of the day “Eat the rich” is something fashionable for Twitter leftists to say when in reality, if given the chance, they would gladly switch places with the rich people they’re advocating for to be eaten (and the funny thing is - some of them are in fact rich and/or privileged). Parasite is the perfect example of this. I don’t love that movie like the general public seems to. It’s very well made and I understand the hype behind it. I also understand why folks clung to it so hard. The inconsiderate privileged people get their wake up call by getting hustled and eventually murdered. It’s also understandable how “the message” was a little lost on the viewers. The director gives mixed messages. It’s fine to give a mixed message or not have a clear stance on something that’s complicated but Bong Joon Ho sort of plays both sides. During the promotion of the film he cited Karl Marx in interviews and painted his protagonists out to be these desperate people with their backs against the wall and no other option but to hustle a rich family.
But at the end of the day, the poor family just wanted the same money and privileges of the rich family they took advantage of. There wasn’t anything noble. We’re not even going to get in to how they screwed over another poor couple in order to get access to the rich folks. I understand that’s part of the issue with the haves and have-nots. The have-nots are manipulated in to adopting a crab in the barrel mentality. My problem is Parasite nor the director do a good job at emphasizing that. It’s like every shitty decision or evil tactic exhibited by the underprivileged is never their fault. If you think I have it wrong that’s fine. But you can understand how one could interpret Parasite in the way I laid it out.
This isn’t about Parasite. It’s just the recent New York Times list of the best movie of the 21st century gave the film relevancy again because it took the #1 spot. Everyone’s praising it again like when it first came out and it got me to thinking about Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay which is sort of like the “anti-Parasite”.

Bruno Dumont understands the absurdity of the idea behind “eat the rich” in these modern times so he went and made a truly absurd film. In Slack Bay, two investigators are looking in to the disappearances of rich tourists on a small French island. All clues lead the detectives to a local poor (and possibly inbreed) family of cannibals that are clearly behind it all.
In Slack Bay, the poor family that literally eats the rich doesn’t want their victim’s money, homes or resources. They’re just evil and mentally ill. It should be mentioned that this movie is not only absurd but a slapstick dark comedy. Instead of taking the subject matter super seriously like other “eat the rich films”, Dumont gets very surreal.

This is definitely another film that belongs in the same conversation as not just Parasite but Martyrs, Funny Games, The Maids, The Housemaid and La Ceremonie (a far superior film than all the movies listed). It’s also in that group of absurd films where an outside force ruins the lives of a seemingly well-off family like Pasolini’s Teorema or Francois Ozon’s remake; Sitcom.

Dumont also borrows heavily from his regular sources of inspiration like Jean Epstein and Fellini…

I am simply doing the same thing that Pharaon de Winter did by including in my film people from northeast France, as [Jean] Epstein also did - Bruno Dumont, Cineaction Issue 51, Feb. 2000

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Le Tempestaire / Slack Bay

Le Tempestaire / Slack Bay

The Three Sided Mirror / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

L'Or Des Mers/ Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

Finis Terrae / Slack Bay

L'Or Des Mers/ Slack Bay

You start doing things by learning and you learn from people who have done it before you. They become your masters. Cinema is an art that comes with big history. I have learned and been influenced by Fellini - Bruno Dumont, film companion

8-1/2 / Slack Bay

Dumont steps outside of his usual Epstein/Fellini comfort zone and also takes from silent comedies…

I did watch a lot of Max Linder films, and the character in many of his films is this very bourgeois character who is made fun of - Bruno Dumont

Max In a Taxi / Slack Bay

I know Dumont hates the Bresson comparisons but between certain isolated scenes and the basic plot, which sort of takes from L’Argent, and its source material and certain isolated moments - there is some Bresson in the film…

He [Bresson] uses close-ups in a way that's very strong and that leads us, as viewers, to reflect on what we see - Bruno Dumont

L'Argent / Slack Bay

I feel like this with every Bruno Dumont film I write about but I cannot stress how much this movie is not for everyone. But at this point it’s become semi-obscure. You don’t really hear people bring this up that much even though it isn’t that old and has legitimate movie stars like Juliette Binoche (Dumont is known for working with non-professional actors but I find that his movies work best when there’s a combination of professional and non-professional actors working together like in Slack Bay). You’d have to be familiar with Dumont’s work or make some kind of an effort to seek it out. If you have somewhat of an open mind and looking for a potential alternative to something Parasite - this might be a good substitute.