'FRIENDSHIP' is 100 Minutes of Pure Tim Robinson Cringe

Tim Robinson has one speed. Ever since he wrote and co-starred in Detroiters before becoming a sainted meme, ascending to viral sketch-comedy royalty with the gut-bustingly hysterical I Think You Should Leave, Robinson has specialized in playing a singular, ever-mutating archetype: the emotionally volatile social misfit. It’s a character he’s twisted into a hundred different shapes, but the core is always the same: an unhinged cocktail of cringe, indignation, and deeply funny despair. Whether he’s feeding eggs to his office monitor, melting down speed-ordering fast food (“55 burgers! 55 fries!”), or demanding a party host eat a receipt to prove he liked a gift, Robinson excels at crafting men living on the verge of complete and total social collapse.

His characters ping-pong between mundane settings like office break rooms and dinner parties, and more absurdist situations like hotdog-car crashes or steamy reality television sets, but the constant is this: he never fits in. He tries to play nice with those around him but is beset constantly by misunderstanding and rejection. He’s a pariah by nature of being deeply uncool. Desperate for acceptance, he leans on broken logic and unconvincing explanations to try to explain his bizarre antics, but the world is unyielding. And for good reason. He’s odd as hell. He’s always the guy no one wants to sit next to, the one who’s missed the memo on human interaction by several thousand miles. Enter Craig Waterman, Robinson’s latest man-out-of-time in the A24 comedy Friendship. Craig is Tim Robinson distilled, a socially inept loner whose every line seems designed to make you erupt with laughter. We meet him at a cancer support group, where he leans over to his wife (Kate Mara), mid-group confessional, and offers the dry platitude, “It’s not coming back.” It’s delivered with that signature Robinson one-two combo: an earnest little smile that’s straining to pass for sincerity but is so laced with a lack of seriousness it’s impossible not to lose it. It’s a one second masterclass in his comedic tone, and proof we’re in good hands. And right then, you know exactly what kind of film Friendship is going to be. And that it’s going to be very very funny.

The film is loosely structured around Craig’s budding friendship with his cool new neighbor, Austin, played by Paul Rudd. The two strike up a fast connection after a mail mix-up, with Austin quickly taking the bored, listless family man Craig under his wing. This involves buddy trips into the sewers, invites to his dad-rock punk band, and mushroom foraging in a swamp. Craig is nudged along by his wife, who just wants to see him get out of his La-Z-Boy and actually do something with his evenings, likely so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about getting drinks with her firefighter ex-boyfriend on a much-too-frequent basis. What starts as a real spark of genuine friendship flames out when Craig botches his introduction to Austin’s wider friend group, and he spends the rest of the film trying to claw his way back into Austin’s good graces.

If you’re a I Think You Should Leave devotee, parts of Friendship will feel like slipping into a pair of well-worn, deeply stained pants. The odd fashion obsession, the casual mentions of diarrhea, the saddling up to order fast food — all greatest hits from the Robinson very distinct playbook, repurposed in a new setting. For some, these moments will read as delightful Easter eggs, little nods to the sketch show’s chaotic canon. For others, they might feel like reheated bits, funny but familiar. It’s a strange alchemy: the film constantly flirts with feeling like an extended episode, yet it also stretches just enough to explore what happens when Robinson’s chaotic energy is asked to sustain a single narrative arc. There’s times when Friendship feels like it could carry the chaos of any given bit a little further, gone a little farther, but holds itself back, resulting in a film that’s often very funny but a few strokes short of a chosen comic masterpiece.

Is Friendship actually a movie about the male loneliness epidemic, or is it just a new stadium for Robinson to pump out his hits? Writer-director Andrew DeYoung would probably argue the former, though I’m not convinced there’s enough thematic meat on Friendship’s bones to make that case convincingly. The film rests entirely on Robinson’s uniquely acerbic sense of humor and would kind of fall apart with anyone else playing Craig. Truly it’s unimaginable to have anyone else in that role, and speaks to the uniqueness of Robinson’s signature mania. Sure, his toxic bromance with Austin gestures at the difficulty adult men face in forming meaningful friendships, but trying to explore that through Tim Robinson is like that moment in Barbie when Margot Robbie’s character laments being ugly. It’s the wrong messenger for the message. If DeYoung has something substantive or urgent to say about male friendship, he knowingly lets it be steamrolled by Robinson’s towering alienness. And honestly, I think that’s the point. Reading too deeply into Friendship risks missing the forest—an actual laugh-a-minute comedy—for the trees, in this case some squishy commentary on male isolation.

Much like a long lick of toad, Friendship doesn’t so much truly derail from reality as it lightly warps it, poking at the thin membrane between everyday awkwardness and full-blown madness. You never know who’s one gentle nudge away from unraveling entirely – though with Craig, and most Robinson characters, that unhinged baseline is basically the starting point. His comedy thrives in the margins of misguided social behavior, just skewed enough to be jarring, just familiar enough to be brutally funny. Whether it’s a tart, defensive response to a harmless question or a casual chat in a hallucinated Subway, it’s always, somehow, just fucking hilarious. If you’re already a disciple of Robinson’s particular breed of comic madness, Friendship is a must-see, ideally in a packed theater, where the collective belly-laughs only deepen the absurdity. These are unhinged times. Of course our funniest comedian is the most unhinged of them all.

CONCLUSION: Devotees of Tim Robinson should consider ‘Friendship’ a must-watch; its sidesplitting comedy is basically all extracted directly from Robinson’s demented misfit persona. Those who don’t vibe with his wavelength will likely find it confusing and offputting, even grueling. Though, for this Robinson stan, the insanity could have been pushed even further. Nevertheless, it’s one of the funniest movies of the past few years.