On the cult Netflix series 鈥淚 Think You Should Leave,鈥 the Detroit-based comedian Tim Robinson has perfected a very particular archetype. He specializes in nebbishy characters sublimating their fury beneath mild-mannered exteriors, chronic seethers whose thin skins have been stretched to a breaking point.
In one legendary sketch, Robinson plays a producer angrily trying to rationalize his use of naked corpses as sight gags in a reality show called 鈥淐offin Flop鈥; he speed-runs through denial and bargaining en route to murderous rage. 鈥淕o ahead,鈥 he bellows at the viewer. 鈥淧ull the plug. I鈥檒l kill you.鈥 Robinson is the reigning master of explosive, incandescent meltdowns. The recurring source of his characters鈥 apoplexy, meanwhile, is strangely relatable. He鈥檚 livid that reality consistently refuses to play ball with his desires.
Like Adam Sandler before him, Robinson has cultivated a form of small-screen comic genius. The question pressurizing his new movie 鈥淔riendship鈥 鈥 written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Andrew DeYoung 鈥 is whether the emotionally roiling persona he鈥檚 showcased on 鈥淚 Think You Should Leave鈥 can sustain a long-form narrative, the way Sandler triumphed in 鈥淧unch-Drunk Love鈥 and 鈥淯ncut Gems.鈥 The answer is, happily, an unqualified yes.
鈥淔riendship,鈥 which premiered to rapturous audience response last fall at TIFF, is trenchant and hilarious, melding an eccentric character study to probing observations about consumer culture. It鈥檚 an absurd movie, but also a disciplined one. The risks it takes with style and tone are carefully calculated; in nearly every case, they pay off brilliantly.
A forlorn figure in a frozen landscape (the film was shot in upstate New York in winter) Robinson鈥檚 Craig Waterman is an app developer whose job involves devising new ways to keep people glued to their phones. He鈥檚 essentially a dopamine dealer, as well as an instant-gratification addict in his own right. He mainlines fast food, and his pop-cultural diet consists exclusively of Marvel movies. Craig isn鈥檛 a loser, exactly; he has a beautiful wife, Tami (Kate Mara), and a teenage son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), both of whom care about him. But he鈥檚 lonely all the same, a wayward beta in search of somebody to bro-out with.
Enter Austin (Paul Rudd), a righteously mustachioed, anti-establishment alpha who鈥檚 moved to town to work as the new local weatherman. Craig idolizes Austin on sight and fantasizes about the pair becoming best friends; that his daydreams involve them traversing a postapocalyptic landscape together suggests the oddness of his inner life. Austin seems to like Craig, too, at least until he tries to integrate him into his larger friend group, at which point catastrophe ensues and both parties become consumed by petty resentment.
As far as point of view goes, we stay on Craig鈥檚 side of the divide. From there, the tension about whether he鈥檒l be able to win Austin back is leveraged against evidence that his new frenemy is harbouring secrets and insecurities of his own.听
The plot of 鈥淔riendship鈥 is predictable and even a bit mechanical. But the execution is consistently surprising: it鈥檚 hard to guess what鈥檚 going to happen on a scene-by-scene basis. The best moments seem to swerve in out of nowhere, like a car changing lanes without signalling. DeYoung is a real filmmaker, using locations and production design as sources of humour and ambient dread. The imagery is consistently expressive, like a literal descent into the city鈥檚 bowels that illuminates something of Craig鈥檚 winding, labyrinthine anxieties. Bathed in deep red light, he could be a refugee from some subterranean horror movie.
It鈥檚 hard to say whether Robinson is an authentically resourceful actor or if his established persona is doing the heavy lifting in 鈥淔riendship.鈥听Either way, he holds his own with Rudd, whose work here is as inspired 鈥 and liberated 鈥 as anything he鈥檚 done since his early 2000s glory days. Kudos also to Mara, who takes the potentially thankless role as the long-suffering wife and imbues it with something elusive and mysterious. The visual motif linking Tami and flowers (she works as an independent florist) is disarmingly lyrical, and there鈥檚 a scene late in the film between her and Robinson that almost seems to belong to a more severe, emotionally acute movie about a marriage under pressure.
Except that 鈥淔riendship鈥 is that movie: not a Gen X Peter Pan riff a la Judd Apatow, but an unsentimental exploration of alienation as a two-way street. Without spoiling Craig鈥檚 fate 鈥 or the results of his open-hearted search for connection 鈥 I’d say the film ultimately plays fair with the character and the world around him, neatly enfolding elation and melancholy, and victory within defeat.
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