‘Friendship’ Review: Tim Robinson Goes Off the Rails in this Hilarious, Bizarre Platonic Breakup Comedy [B+] | SXSW

It’s all too easy to say that Friendship, the debut film from writer-director Andrew DeYoung starring Tim Robinson, plays like a feature-length version of I Think You Should Leave—possibly to the point of redundancy. But the film invites the comparison, not only through Robinson’s love-it-or-hate-it brand of weirdo abrasiveness but also via its depiction of a surreal world seemingly inhabited purely by an endless barrage of lunatics. Every human interaction opens the door to the most uncomfortable and baffling exchanges of left-field barbs and behavior; every sequence is an opportunity to make you squirm in your seat while laughing in delight and panic alike.

To that end, Friendship operates with the kind of haphazard quality you’d expect from translating sketch comedy into a feature. It’s a true laugh-out-loud revelation for the distinct set of alternative comedy fans it’s made for, packed with all the freakish, deranged character detailing and manic Tim Robinson screaming they could hope for. It also lacks any real narrative thrust or satisfying resolution, existing more as a collection of offbeat vignettes that chase laughs wherever possible. Your mileage will vary on how much you care about that when the humor is as frequently successful as it is here. 

The bizarre universe of Friendship is established quickly through Robinson’s typical performance tics. Here, he plays Craig Waterman, a friendless oddball whose hobbies don’t extend much past seeing “the latest Marvel” (it’s apparently nuts). He works a corporate job at Universal Digital Innovations, brainstorming ways to make people more addicted to their phones. He tries to connect with his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), often fruitlessly. A misdelivered package leads him to the home of Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a suave and handsome weatherman who plays in a punk band called Mayor Nichols Sucks—setting up a fruitless B-plot about a conflict with the allegedly corrupt mayor––and Austin invites Craig into his orbit after their brief interaction, kickstarting the unlikely friendship. 

While Robinson echoes the various maniacs he personifies in I Think You Should Leave, Rudd feels like an amalgamation of his past roles. He sports the abundance of self-confidence and 70s-style mustache of Brian Fantana in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, paired with the hobbyist musician vibe and burgeoning male friendship dynamic of Peter Klaven in I Love You, Man. Rudd so distinctly resembling these characters feels intentional, juxtaposing his audience-friendly charm against the aggressively unnatural universe of Friendship. It also positions him as the straight man to Robinson’s unhinged misfit—or at least as straight as a character can be in a movie where a “fun night out” involves prowling the subterranean horrors of the local sewer system to break into the mayor’s office.

Still, there’s enough of a gap between Austin and Craig that their brief connection implodes after a bewildering incident where Craig stuffs soap into his mouth at his first hangout with Austin’s extended friend group. Friendship suddenly morphs into a deranged version of The Banshees of Inisherin, where male ego and emotional repression thwart any chance of meaningful connection.

As much as Friendship subsists on its jarring sense of humor, it’s in the service of thematic strands about the fickle nature of not just platonic male relationships, but also a greater investigation into how someone with no self-reflection nurtures any of their close relationships whatsoever. Though second-billed and the foil that drives the actions of Robinson’s character, Rudd has considerably less screen time than you may expect, as Craig’s perspective dominates the narrative. His delusions about what went wrong in their friendship steer him into endless ill-advised, self-imposed debacles that extrapolate from that failure. While serving as a reliable source of comedy, Craig’s abrupt, pointed rage loudly betrays a man beset by insecurity and jealousy of intimate relationships he wishes he could maintain. It’s not just Austin’s bandmate buddies who he seems far more affectionate with than he does with Craig, it’s the chumminess between his coworkers, or the bond between his own wife and son, whose closeness is escalated to discomforting levels via a mother-son kiss on the lips to establish their relationship. 

That heightened sense of perspective of the attachment between people around him is what drives Craig crazy. Beneath his confounding personality and lack of self-awareness, he seems vaguely aware of his isolation but utterly incapable of reckoning with it. The cast spares no effort in trying to find the emotional truth within the absurdity, with the dissolution of the friendship approaching a harrowing tragicomic magnitude through the strained chemistry between Robinson and Rudd, and the weary exasperation of Mara’s performance. Craig is such a loon that it’s a wonder Tami ever began a relationship with him in the first place, but their dynamic reads as an extreme case of a man who has grown slowly more oblivious over time, and whose lonesome sadness doubles as a form of intense egomania. He can’t connect with anyone because he can’t see past himself.

Though these overarching ideas help the film graduate from a simple series of sketches, the script struggles to fully explore them, often falling back on shocking or expectation-subverting scenarios based around a generally intuitive perspective rather than mining real insights. But that chaotic approach has its own value: Friendship thrives in the way it constantly throws you for a crazed loop—whether through Craig’s escalating, stalkerish tendencies or unexpected gags that upend comedy movie conventions (the film’s version of the requisite drug trip scene is brilliant). It’s unashamed of being a vehicle for a relentless barrage of aberrant jokes and outlandish detours, anarchic in its efforts to find some kind of pathos within the insanity. If comedy is meant to mine laughter out of universal truths, then there’s something to be said for the fact that Friendship is just really goddamn funny.

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2025 SXSW Film and Television Festival. Friendship will be released in U.S. theaters by A24 on May 9, 2025.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Trace Sauveur

Latest posts by Trace Sauveur (see all)

• ‘Friendship’ Review: Tim Robinson Goes Off the Rails in this Hilarious, Bizarre Platonic Breakup Comedy [B+] | SXSW - March 12, 2025
• ‘40 Acres’ Review: A Familiar Post-Apocalypse Setting Gives Way to Socio-Political Critique and Cannibal Horror [B+] | SXSW - March 11, 2025
• ‘The Baltimorons’ Review: Jay Duplass Returns with an Endearing, Bittersweet Christmas Eve Romance [B] | SXSW - March 10, 2025