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.