Friendship (2025) feels like an extended play of Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave Half the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, while the other half made me want to see just how far I could press into my theater seat. The film is awkward, unhinged, and shows just how difficult it is to make friends in middle age.
Movie Details
Movie: Friendship
Director: Andrew DeYoung
Starring: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara
Genre: Comedy / Absurdist / Dark Humor
Runtime: 1h 49m
Rating: R
📝 A Brief Review (No Spoilers)
On its face, Friendship is a simple movie about the challenges of meeting new people while navigating mid-life. Craig (Tim Robinson) works a routine job at a company focused on making apps more “habit-forming”—a term they prefer over “addictive” for PR reasons. A chance encounter with misdelivered mail introduces him to a new neighbor with a killer mustache (Paul Rudd), and a friendship blossoms. That’s the last normal thing that happens in this movie.
The events of the film bounce from mundane to absurd to horror-adjacent like a coked-up pinball. It leaves the viewer constantly on edge, and even in the moments of relief, there’s a top-tier awkwardness that makes British sitcoms feel tame. Craig could easily slot into any I Think You Should Leave sketch—one moment he’s quietly processing, the next he’s shouting in panicked absurdity. Characters make nonsensical decisions for laughs or tension, and it mostly succeeds.
Even as a fan of Robinson’s other work, the joke starts to wear thin around the halfway mark. There’s a stretch of about twenty minutes where the film drags, the jokes stop landing, and I found myself wishing I could fast forward. Thankfully, the final act delivers on the film’s rising tension and brought me back. I left the theater conflicted—because while I haven’t laughed that hard in a theater in a minute (probably since Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), I also haven’t felt that bored.
What holds the film together is the cast’s complete commitment to the bit. Even straight characters like Craig’s wife, Tami (Kate Mara), have moments of understated lunacy. They might not get the biggest laughs in the moment, but it’s the small details that make them objectively hilarious. Idiosyncrasies are played so straight in this film it’s almost hard to laugh at them in the moment—and that is Tim Robinson’s sweet spot.
For example, there is an extended shot of Craig carrying an overfull cup of coffee that is still making me laugh as I write this. It’s simple on its face, but somehow hilarious.
💭 Final Thoughts
I’m surprised audiences are so universally positive on this movie. It feels like the kind of film that should be divisive—fully committed to Robinson’s particular brand of chaos. Still, I’m thinking about it the next morning, and a part of me wants to see it again, just to witness someone else’s reaction.
It’s also refreshing to see an R-rated comedy in theaters again. It’s been a while, and we need more films that are willing to give us a stupid laugh.
Ashton Macaulay 