Tim Robinson has become synonymous with his surreal Netflix series I Think You Should Leave, which is maybe why Friendship feels a bit like a collection of sketches: guy avoiding Marvel spoilers; guy at boardroom meeting who turns against the client; guy trying to give the best toast at a party; guy who's devoted to a single brand of very unremarkable clothes.
Robinson plays Craig, who exactly fits the mould of his awkward I Think You Should Leave characters: he flubs normal social situations, and after inevitably committing a faux pas, responds by escalating the situation with yelling and increased weirdness.
He's an ineffectual husband to his wife Tami (Kate Mara) and an un-parernal dad to his teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer), and he proves to be a very overzealous friend to the charming new neighbour Austin (Paul Rudd). That titular friendship is the central relationship of the film that causes Craig's life to unravel — although, based on how poorly Craig handles every single situation, it's hard to imagine how he managed to get a long-lasting marriage in the first place, let alone a white-collar job with his own office.
But Friendship doesn't concern itself with logic. Rather, its appeal is its silly non-sequiturs — like when Craig drinks out of a boot-shaped glass for some reason, or his wildly anticlimactic drug trip at a Subway. I Think You Should Leave has always been very hit-or-miss, and there are some winning scenes here.
But this isn't a sketch show, it's a narrative film, and Friendship's sheer inanity is what makes it good but keeps it from being great. It introduces various threads that don't pay off, existing only to provide a laugh in the moment: Tami is a cancer survivor for no reason other than to let Craig be awkward at her support group, and a plot line about the family selling their house is abandoned without explanation. Perhaps if Friendship had been broken up into a series of sketches, which is how I suspect how its scenarios were conceived, its laughs might have added up to more than the sum of its parts. Bonus points for the vibey score of creepy synth tones and hymnal chants.
At the end of the screening, writer-director Andrew DeYoung walked out for a Q&A session, and someone near the front yelled "awful movie!" in a tone that was scathing rather than playful. They were wrong — it wasn't an awful movie. But that post-screening moment was funnier, weirder and more socially inappropriate than anything that happened on the screen. Now that's cringe comedy.
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5–15. Get information about tickets and screening at TIFF's website.