This story contains mild spoilers for Friendship. By many accounts, straight men are unwell. From the “dating gap” to statistics showing they’re falling behind to the so-called “male loneliness epidemic,” we’re being inundated with discourse about whether there’s a crisis of masculinity and what the cause might be. While you could spend hours doomscrolling about the topic—and we should educate ourselves(!)—you could also see Friendship and laugh about it, too.
Directed by Andrew DeYoung (best known for directing TV comedies like Pen15 and Shrill), the A24 film centers on suburbanite dad Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) as he befriends his new neighbor Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd)...and spirals when their relationship falls apart. Craig (awkward; works a deadend corporate job; only wears clothes from a brand called Ocean View Dining) thinks Austin oozes cool (weatherman with a porn stache; plays hooky to go on “adventures;” performs in a punk band). To Craig, he’s a role model, being that Austin’s both an all-American bro and open about his feelings. Their dynamic feels pointed at a time when there are very few examples of healthy masculinity in pop culture, and instead, toxic figures have found an audience in impressionable young men.
Craig (Tim Robinson) and Austin (Paul Rudd) the first time they hang out together in Friendship.
After kicking it a few times, Craig’s hopes and dreams of endless brewskies and jam sessions are shattered when Austin hits him with, “I do not wish to continue this friendship.”
Friendship is a tragicomedy. It thrives in the space between absurdity (fans of Robinson’s Netflix sketch series, I Think You Should Leave, will be familiar with the humor) but also heartbreak (few things are as devastating as a friend breakup, especially for Craig, who is fumbling his attempts at camaraderie). But the crux, and more importantly, the nightmarishness of the film, lies in how much Craig, trapped by the confines of masculinity, fails to look inward and thrusts his problems onto other people to a ludicrous extent.
Barely one minute into the movie, Craig’s wife Tami (Kate Mara, brilliantly playing it straight the whole time) vulnerably tells her cancer survivor support group that, though she’s on the mend, some things, like reaching orgasm when she’s intimate with her husband, are still a challenge. Craig, who’s sitting next to her, interjects, “I’m orgasming fine.”
Friendship marks Andrew DeYoung's feature film debut, after directing episodes of hit comedies and several short films.
It’s the first of many instances in which there’s humor in how he fixates on his manhood, ignoring what’s in front of him in exchange for the approval of other men. When Craig’s obsession with “winning back” Austin goes awry, he acts out and makes his anger an ordeal for others, especially his wife. (Not making his wife climax pales in comparison to how he eventually causes her disappearance.)
Tami ends up faring just fine—she’s traumatized, but fine. She realizes she doesn't want to let an unhappy marriage cause her grief. (Good for her!) It’s a wildly different reaction to every choice Craig makes amid his frustration over Austin and his boys excluding him. But with every hysterical problem he causes, he remains the joke—as if Friendship is saying, “Grow up!” and suggesting coping mechanisms beyond punching holes in drywall.
Tami (Kate Mara) and Craig (Robinson) attend her support group for cancer survivors.
That’s perhaps something many of us have wanted to say many times in recent years. Nowadays, when men in power make decisions that baffle, enrage, and harm, and when some women have vowed to decenter men from their lives, continually hearing about the plight of men can be somewhat of an exhaustion. (If only we could all be like Tami and have her eye-opening moment) DeYoung’s debut falls in a long line of comedies about male friendship, from ‘00s hits Superbad to another Rudd joint, I Love You, Man, but it might be the first great one of the male loneliness epidemic era. And there’s something of a delight in seeing that explored in a bromance movie distributed by a film bro juggernaut. While Friendship seems to imply that we should simply have empathy and lighten up, we can all find a bit of a reprieve in accepting that masculinity has become somewhat of a cringe-comedy.
Friendship releases in select theaters May 9.
