Friendship

Tim Robinson makes the jump from television to feature film in Friendship, a dark, unusual, and very funny comedy that should be right up the alley of fans of his Netflix sketch series “I Think You Should Leave.”

Robinson plays Craig, a working stiff with a wife, a teenage son, and a mundane suburban middle class existence. Craig’s wife, florist Tami (Kate Mara), has just gotten through a cancer scare, with — what is obvious to us — little emotional support from Craig.

One day, Craig walks over to an unknown neighbor’s house to drops off a misdelivered package. There, he meets Austin (Paul Rudd), a charming local news weatherman and thus, as the title suggests, a friendship begins.

Movies usually make adult friendships seem easy to begin and long lasting. It is one of those fictions we have simply come to accept, like how for a long time, a schlubby, chubby male CBS sitcom lead would always have a patient, stunning, and unusually fit wife. It has no doubt happened in reality, but how many of the couples you know fit that mold?

Friendship, an A24 film through and through, is uninterested in sitcom-level suspension of disbelief. It depicts this blossoming friendship as a rare and sacred discovery for Craig, who is as socially awkward and short-fused as most of the characters Robinson has played on television.

Rudd already made the quintessential comedy about a male friendship beginning well into adulthood in I Love You, Man. That 2009 film came during the heyday of the raunchy, R-rated Judd Apatow comedy and it holds up well. Friendship gives us a modern, somewhat arthouse twist on that same idea. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung, who makes his feature debut after more than a decade in shorts and television, is clearly familiar with and fond of the comic sensibilities of both Robinson and Rudd. And the filmmaker kind of sort of remakes Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin in modern-day America with Robinson and Rudd taking over the Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson roles. But, as iffy as that sounds on paper, DeYoung’s film has its own voice and energy. It also happens to be one of the funniest films I’ve seen in the past fifteen years or so.

Robinson excels at making absurd and outrageous behavior somehow awfully relatable. Anyone who’s struggled through a social interaction and later replayed it in their head as a form of self-reflection/loathing can appreciate how the lonely and unloved Craig would seize the opportunity to hang with a cool guy and the other affable pals that come with him. And yet, we can also fully understand why Austin would swiftly move to break off the friendship after a single night of awkward incidents and accidents. The comedy comes from a real place and that’s why it consistently produces the big laughs that it does.

Friendship proves to be more than just a consistently funny time as it takes some unpredictable turns and digs into the pathos of what it presents. It’s a character study, a commentary on modern-day socialization, and, at times, it’s practically a horror movie. Some of it is random and a bunch of it is over the top. Fans of “I Think You Should Leave” would expect nothing less from Robinson’s potential crossover vehicle.

One of the bigger surprises here is that Robinson doesn’t take a writing or producing credit here, given how in his “Q Zone” this is and how comfortable a transition he makes from sitcoms and sketches to feature film. It is tough to predict if this movie will function as a springboard for him or simply capture the peak of his creative power. Comedy careers are fickle and too often short-lived. Robinson has already earned himself internet immortality for the endlessly quoted and GIF-ed three seasons he’s given us. Then again, the three creators/two stars of “Portlandia” are virtually MIA these days and the average American couldn’t tell you who Steve Coogan is.

Are the anti-mainstream tendencies of Friendship any concern at a time when mainstream comedies have all but disappeared from theaters? I am certain this film will draw favorable reviews from critics and be embraced by fans of its stars. I have no idea what those things mean in terms of actual box office business and career advancement, though I am not alone in watching with vested interest. Robinson and Rudd are two of the brightest lights in 21st century comedy and I highly recommend this offbeat, rewarding, and highly entertaining collaboration.