Friendship review – male inadequacy barbecued in Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd’s comedy bromance

Here is a goofy-surreal comedy from first-time feature-maker Andrew DeYoung starring sketch comic Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd; it is potentially as divisive as a Vimto-Marmite cocktail. It is a shaggy dog tale of ineffable silliness, operating ostensibly on the realist lines of indie US cinema but sauntering sideways from its initial premise, getting further and further from what had appeared to be a real issue: how difficult it is for grown men to make new friends.

In this case, a beta-male chump attempts to be mates with his supercool new neighbour and you might even suspect that the film’s progressive excursion into stoner unseriousness itself enacts men’s avoidant nature, their inability to find an emotionally intelligent connection with each other. The result is not unlike the darkly wacky entertainments of Jim Hosking or Todd Solondz; there’s also a tiny hint of Charlie Kaufman and the white-collar-workplace losers of Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell.

In a bland suburban close, Craig (Robinson) is a dull but well-meaning guy working in corporate PR consultancy, whose elegant wife Tami (Kate Mara) runs a flower delivery business from the house. She is in remission from cancer, and Craig has patently no clue how to deal with this. At a support group for people with cancer and their partners, Craig beamingly assures her in front of everyone present that there’s no way the cancer is coming back, in a wince-makingly misjudged attempt at emotional strength. Now Tami is openly reconnecting with an old flame, in the face of which Craig is as uncomprehending and unjudging as the family dog.

It is at this moment that Craig runs into Austin (Paul Rudd), the stylish guy who lives next door; he is a minor celebrity, plays in a local band and is a weatherman on the regional TV news. (This is in slight contrast to his character in Anchorman, field reporter Brian Fantana; Steve Carell’s Brick was the weatherman.) Craig is stunned by Austin’s worldly sophistication and laid-back charm, and Austin is touched by Craig’s heartbreaking vulnerability; he welcomes Craig into his circle of male friends for a “hang”. Over-excited Craig embarrassingly goes too far and annoys Austin, but discovers a secret that means that Austin can never entirely break up with him as a friend.

Until Craig’s terrible faux pas with Austin, which he (horrifyingly) attempts to style out by literally eating soap and goofily intoning “sorry”, it’s possible to read Friendship as a plausible, if far-detached character study, a cringe-comedy Single White Male heading for disaster. Then it swerves away, following its nose towards something weirder, with an amusing setpiece featuring Craig licking a toad in search of psychedelic thrills and experiencing only a minute-long hallucination of outrageous banality. For some, that will be tiresome; and it’s certainly the case that the female characters are under-imagined (Austin’s wife hardly exists at all). But male inadequacy is the point; the loopy absurdism grows on you.