TORONTO, Canada—Tim Robinson’s characters are socially inept weirdos who don’t recognize that they’re incapable of properly existing in society and grow furiously frustrated when their craziness is thrown back in their face.
With his Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, the comedian has perfected a particular brand of pathetic-yet-hostile strangeness, playing office drones, TV hucksters, and suburban husbands and fathers (among others) who are oblivious to (or disinterested in following) the tenets that govern human interaction. They’re the creep who says and does the wrong thing at the absolute worst time, makes everyone intensely uncomfortable, and then exacerbates the situation by bizarrely apologizing, doubling down, or freaking out.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Friendship is Robinson’s first attempt at expanding his persona in a feature-length project, and it’s as feverishly and hilariously demented as one would expect. Pairing him with Paul Rudd in a story about male need, camaraderie, and obsession, Andrew DeYoung’s film is full of trademark circumstances, stunts, and screams that fans of the star’s small-screen effort will instantly recognize as more of the same.
What truly elevates Robinson’s maiden cinematic outing, however, is its recognition that, at heart, his oddballs aren’t just harmless goofs—they’re unhinged psychopaths.
Friendship opens with a close-up of Tami (Kate Mara) speaking to a support group about her successful triumph over cancer. As DeYoung’s camera pulls back, it reveals that beside her is Craig (Robinson), her husband, and given the comedian’s usual penchant for inapt pronouncements, the look of eager-puppy support on his face elicits an immediate anticipatory chuckle. “It’s not coming back!” he blurts out about his wife’s disease. When Tammy admits that what she’s most looking forward to is watching her son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) graduate from high school and finally having another orgasm, Craig is quick to state, “I’m orgasming fine!”
At home, Tami lets Craig know that a package has been wrongly delivered to their house, and to bring it over to their neighbor. He does, and meets Austin (Rudd), who’s just moved in with his wife, and whose cool demeanor and appearance—a big mustache, scruffy beard, floppy hair, and a bandana tied around his neck—impress Craig.
A few nights later, Tami informs her husband that she’s set up a get-together between him and Austin. Despite initially balking, Craig gives in and, for his efforts, discovers that this stranger is the Channel 3 weatherman, a member of a punk-rock band, and the kind of fascinating guy who waxes philosophical about a 400,000-year-old artifact. Sitting and having a beer in Austin’s ’70s-retro house, which boasts a giant fish tank and a guitar on the wall, Craig practically swoons.
Thus, a relationship is born, and per Robinson tradition, it swiftly veers into wacko territory. Austin takes Craig on an “adventure” through the city’s sewers in order to break into City Hall, during which Craig loses his phone and his shoe, the latter purchased from his favorite outfitter, Ocean View Dining (?!?).
Later, he’s invited to hang out with Austin and his other friends, but that goes even worse, thanks to Craig walking directly into a sliding glass door and sucker-punching Austin in a supposedly playful boxing match. This naturally alienates Austin, which in turn upsets and destabilizes Craig, whose behavior—aimed at rekindling their friendship, and later at finding new bros to call his own—gradually devolves into desperate lunacy.
Friendship’s main plot is a sturdy vehicle for inspired dude delirium. Unsurprisingly, though, it’s the film’s random details and detours that make it riotous. At home, Craig goes on and on about how he wants to see “a new Marvel” and that he can’t stand spoilers. Buying a phone, he tells the teenage salesman that he looks older, just like those girls who pretend to be 21. He’s fixated on his favorite local bar’s “Seal Team 6” meal deal, in which a customer is expected to eat the same enormous feast that was consumed by the soldiers who killed Osama Bin Laden. And in a desperate desire to copy Austin, Craig—whom Tami says doesn’t even like music—begins blasting Slipknot whenever possible, be it in the car or while making breakfast for his son.
Awkward silences and more awkward declarations and deeds dominate Friendship, whose protagonist is soon abandoning his spouse in the sewers and returning to the phone store (because he’s continually losing his device) to buy drugs. Having seen a book on ayahuasca in Austin’s house—when he’d broken in and stolen a gold-plated pistol—Craig asks for psychedelics and is treated to a $100 lick of a toad that excretes hallucinogenic slime.
Lying in the dark on the floor of this cramped space, Craig prepares to have his mind blown. Yet the vision that transpires is so unexpectedly underwhelming that it proves to be the film’s laugh-out-loud funniest bit—especially given Craig’s predictably angry reaction to it.
Making an a-- of himself at work with a too-full cup of coffee and in a meeting with the mayor, and at a party in his house where Tami acts uncomfortably chummy with her firefighter ex-boyfriend (Josh Segarra), Robinson’s protagonist is a familiar creation taken to a pathetically disturbed extreme.
Consequently, when DeYoung tries to garner a bit of sympathy for him, the gesture is so unwarranted and out of place that it’s exceedingly amusing. Robinson isn’t interested in empathy, except in a surreal sort of way; what he’s after is detonating everyday social and professional incidents and dynamics with startling bursts of insanity. He’s like an alien’s approximation of a human—he understands enough of the rules to get by but can’t quite master the finer points that might make him tolerable, much less likable.
As a result, the film manages to bestow Craig with a completely undeserved happily-ever-after, and then has him ruin it by failing to let go of his fixation on being accepted. Partnered with the always ridiculous Rudd, Robinson reconfirms his standing as the reigning master of discomfort. Together, they make Friendship the funniest movie of the year.
