“Friendship” (2024) is “Falling Down” (1993) for average people meets “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004). Starring Tim Robinson, the co-creator, cowriter and star of the Netflix sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson,” it is about an aggressively not special man, Craig Waterman (Robinson) who finally feels alive when he meets his new neighbor, local television weatherman Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd). When the connection ends, he keeps trying to recapture that feeling, but each attempt only ruins his life. Will Craig ever be able to accept his circumstances or keep trying?
Craig is smart enough to know how people feel about him but helpless to do anything to socially lubricate the situation. He generally elects to do the worst wrong thing in most situations so while he is sympathetic, he can erase good will and grace by taking the second chance too far. He has a chicken egg problem. Is he like this because people treat him with little to no respect or vice versa? Probably a combination of both, and it does not matter. For the last sixteen years, he had a person, his wife, Tami (Kate Mara), but in the last year, time has been spent focusing on her recovery after becoming cancer free. There is no return to normal.
When Craig meets Austin, it is bromance at first sight. Craig sees Austin as the golden ticket to a better life, and at first, they seem to be perfect for each other. Craig gives admiration and excellent career advice to Austin, and Austin showers him with attention and acceptance. Is Rudd becoming A24’s darling? First “Death of a Unicorn” (2025) and now “Friendship!” He does a good job, but sometimes he feels a little too much as if he is playing a character, not a person, whereas everyone else feels organic. Yes, Austin is supposed to be a local celebrity, so he is supposed to have a bigger personality, but broadcast television figures are normal people too. His persona was a bit too on to gain so many authentic friendships and have a happy marriage, which feels like an afterthought in the movie. Austin is the ying to Craig’s yang.
Craig discovers that this acceptance is not unconditional or infinite, and Austin is not wrong to clearly communicate his boundary. The rest of “Friendship” is about Craig trying to recreate that magic or surpass it. He has no grasp of the infinite and is incapable of helping Tami go through her own existential crisis believing that she invented the concept of intelligent design when she looks at her flowers. He tries to imitate Craig, which leads to ridicule or disaster. There are two “lick” scenes: a conventional one with his wife and then dabbling with an alternative to ayahuasca. Between the imagery of the flower and the obvious Georgia O’Keefe link to the first lick scene without being pornographic, prior to Craig, his only subconscious link to the mystery of life is his wife, and his wife is becoming increasingly inaccessible.
Tami’s journey is meaningful to her, but it is equally terrestrial bound. She openly talks about her “friendship” with her ex-boyfriend, Devon (Josh Segarra), a fireman. She has a side hustle as a florist, which helps her tangentially touch nature, but a cultivated, artificial one more linked to death. If there is a lesson, there is no available transcendent meaning that will help you cope with brushes with death, feeling left out, being a failure or just being unremarkable. There is something about the American existence, specifically suburban, that neglects to create an environment that make people be more.
If you watch French films like “Misericordia” (2024) or “When Fall Is Coming” (2024), it is an ordinary pastime to look for mushrooms and walk in nature. Director and writer Andrew DeYoung depicts nature as a limited field not ideal for finding mushrooms. His montages of the glass building where Craig works or mall interiors are artificial spaces. The closest that Austin and Craig come to sensing the infinite in their surroundings is an aqueduct built in 1832, another manmade structure with an allusion to the vagina dentata, the threat of getting swallowed whole, which also happens with some sneaky quicksand. A mystical experience is impossible or limited to man’s imagination. If God exists in this universe, He is unable to reach them.
Craig is an example of a man with a soul bound to a type of post-fall purgatory with few universal human pursuits. One remaining ritual is “the new Marvel movie,” which is hilarious but also sad because it feels as if it will be applicable forever. “Friendship” is in theaters at the same time as “Thunderbolts*” (2025). Movie theaters are a secular church with familiar benedictions and rituals involving Nicole Kidman and turning off cell phones, another critical fixture in Craig’s life. He is constantly losing his practical tool for communication. If the universe is speaking and trying to get him to tune out of the frequencies of his time and reach for a more substantial connection, he will not hear it. Craig, the metaphorical digital drug dealer, is unmoored at the hands of his craft. He does not have the tools to be free. The only intermediary to the universe is the local drug dealer/cell phone salesman, Tony (Billy Bryk). Bryk makes a meal out of a morsel in a small but memorable role thus proving he was not a weak link in the underwhelming “Hell of a Summer” (2023).
If “Friendship” is heartbreaking, it is the occasional times when Craig’s ordinary life is going well, and he fails to recognize and embrace it. He works at Universal Digital Information and seems to be successful enough to land important accounts. While his relationship with his son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), is not consistently positive, it has notable points. He seems financially successful enough to afford a string of smartphones with no financing. He shows flashes of invigoration, but eventually the act is too much to keep going, and he drops it. Still he is not easy to completely write off when he sees Austin’s flaws and instead of tearing him down, he respects and covers them. Craig would rather shore up his idol than see him as a human being. One act of devotion is to secretly wash Austin’s dishes.
DeYoung’s first feature seems to be a hit in its opening weekend in select markets. DeYoung is merciless and brave in the unflinching way that he refuses to look away from his creations’ blemishes. If given the choice between “Friendship” and the “Joker” franchise, it is no contest. Choose the prior, but I still yearn for a bleak realistic movie that ends with a whimper, not a crash out. This movie is a step in the right direction, but still far from the mark. Also to call it a comedy seems cruel. Secondhand embarrassment is scarier than any horror movie.
