Friendship (dir. Andrew DeYoung)

by Jack Martin | Jul 19, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 101 mins

UK Distributor: Paramount Pictures

UK Release Date: 18 July 2025

WHO’S IN FRIENDSHIP?

Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer, Josh Segarra, Billy Byrk, Jason Veasey, Jon Glaser, Eric Rahill, Connor O’Malley, Carmen Christopher, Craig Frank, Omar Torres, Jacob Ming-Trent, Daniel London, Whitmer Thomas, Raphael Sbarge, Ivy Wolk, Meredith Garretson

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Andrew DeYoung (director, writer), Johnny Holland, J.D. Lifshitz, Raphael Margules and Nick Weidenfeld (producers), Keegan DeWitt (composer), Andy Rydzewski (cinematographer), Sophie Corra (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A socially awkward man (Robinson) takes his new friendship with a weatherman (Rudd) way too far…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON FRIENDSHIP?

Relationship break-ups are hard, but friendship breakups are even harder. There’s something about developing a close platonic bond with someone and then being cast aside for whatever reason that stings so much more than being dumped by someone you’ve been more romantic with, because friends are the ones who’ll often have your back as much as you have theirs, and no longer having that feels like a part of you has just been erased from existence.

If you want a movie that dives into the very psychology of friendship breakups, as well as the increasingly dark psychological consequences, I highly recommend The Banshees of Inisherin. Alternatively, there’s Friendship, a similarly off-beat comedy from writer-director Andrew DeYoung that takes a slightly different approach, that being how the cause of the breakup almost always stems from our own inability to recognise our own toxic traits, and how they can control a personal narrative that, if left untreated, doesn’t end well for anyone.

The protagonist of this deeply uncomfortable yet grimly hilarious tale is Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson), a marketing executive who lives a dull suburban life with his wife Tami (Kate Mara), a recent cancer survivor, and their teen son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer). However, he soon meets his new neighbour Austin (Paul Rudd), a local weatherman who leads a much more interesting life than he does, and the two quickly hit it off, much to the delight of the otherwise solitary Craig. However, their friendship reaches a point where Austin is no longer comfortable with having Craig in his life – more on that in a bit – which causes an increasingly desperate Craig, who is determined to replicate the joy and spontaneity he felt with his former friend, to push his family and career even further away in a pathetic bid to get back in Austin’s good books.

Driving the core of Friendship is the fact that its main character, Robinson’s Craig, is not a good person. Like, at all. He may seem mild-mannered, not to mention extremely socially awkward, but early on he is shown to have deeply narcissistic tendencies, often imagining scenarios where he is the life of the party whilst under Austin’s wing, while in reality he always tries to find a way to make any situation all about himself, whether it’s his wife’s cancer survivors’ meeting or an impromptu hang-out with some of Austin’s other, much more stable friends. It is the latter that becomes the central incident that causes Austin to distance himself, and as shallow and sometimes vain as he can be, it’s hard to blame him because the kind of behaviour that Craig exhibits, which also amounts to volatile emotional outbursts that cause him to kick out anyone who delivers Marvel spoilers, would make anyone want to steer clear of people like him.

DeYoung picks apart his protagonist’s self-absorption through a series of increasingly cringeworthy set pieces that are deliberately designed to make you squirm in your seat. At one point, he breaks into his now former friend’s house and inadvertently steals a highly valuable and dangerous item (one that Chekhov would certainly approve of), while later on an excursion through a series of sewage tunnels ends in exceptionally embarrassing fashion. Watching this guy go to such drastic measures in order to feel a sense of satisfaction in his life, even at the expense of the trust and companionship of his own family, makes for moments where any belly-laugh comes with an extra side of awkwardness, for the filmmaker all too easily prods at the character’s weak spots to reveal a much more broken and selfish man underneath a seemingly harmless surface.

However, the moments that are meant to be funny, even in a grim sense, are often very funny, as DeYoung balances the cringier parts with a deep sense of pathos, to where you are genuinely laughing along at parts that might not go over so well with thinner-skinned viewers. Robinson, an SNL veteran and co-creator of the hit Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave, has a comedic aura about him that draws parallels to fellow SNL vet Adam Sandler, in particular how both have on-screen personas that appear to be shouty and emotionally immature man-children, but Robinson has sharper timing that elevates not just his character’s pathetic nature but the general red flags that come with his off-putting personality. He and DeYoung do very well with showing the dark nature of this character through uncomfortable comedy, often teetering on the surreal as they experiment with fantasy and heightened expectations to create some subversive moments, like perhaps the funniest anti-climax of a psychedelic drug trip in modern cinema history.

It’s certainly not a breezy watch, as there will be some parts that just won’t sit right with certain viewers, even when they are meant to be much funnier than they seem. But Friendship, like The Banshees of Inisherin before it, revels in its bleakly funny approach to the very tender subject of friendship breakups, and while no fingers are sliced off in this one, it reaches a point where you’ll anticipate some kind of similar self-mutilation coming along, if only to make things even more hilariously uncomfortable.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Friendship is an often hilariously uncomfortable examination of toxic male behaviour where writer-director Andrew DeYoung and lead actor Tim Robinson bring to life a deeply unsympathetic protagonist through a series of funny, and deliberately cringeworthy, encounters that leave you awkwardly laughing.