Welcome back to The Daily Screen. Today we’re talking about Friendship, the new “queasy comedy” from A24 that asks: are men O.K.? In this darkly amusing buddy film, Tim Robinson plays Craig, a middle-aged app developer whose bumbling “gee-willikers” grin can suddenly twist into a gargoyle’s snarl. When small-town weatherman Austin Carmichael—played by Paul Rudd—moves in next door, Craig seizes on him as the friend he’s been missing. But Craig’s “severe, sometimes violent disrespect for boundaries” triggers a tension that escalates from awkward dinners to a tense break-in, mysterious disappearances, and even a hallucinatory trip. Everything feels coated in a faint, menacing sheen of unreality, as if a slasher movie is only a twist away. Critics note that Friendship riffs on earlier Ruddy comedies like I Love You, Man, but here the laughs and screams “all but bleed together,” creating a portrait of male loneliness that’s totalizing—and utterly disturbing. That’s Friendship, streaming soon in theaters near you.
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