Friendship review – male inadequacy barbecued in Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd’s comedy bromance

Robinson is magnificently cringeworthy as a man in thrall to his cool neighbour Rudd in Andrew DeYoung’s film, as divisive as a Vimto/Marmite cocktailHere is a goofy-surreal comedy from first-time feature-maker Andrew DeYoung starring sketch comic Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd; it is potentially as divisive as a Vimto-Marmite cocktail. It is a shaggy dog tale of ineffable silliness, operating ostensibly on the realist lines of indie US cinema but sauntering sideways from its initial premise, getting further and further from what had appeared to be a real issue: how difficult it is for grown men to make new friends.In this case, a beta-male chump attempts to be mates with his supercool new neighbour and you might even suspect that the film’s progressive excursion into stoner unseriousness itself enacts men’s avoidant nature, their inability to find an emotionally intelligent connection with each other. The result is not unlike the darkly wacky entertainments of Jim Hosking or Todd Solondz; there’s also a tiny hint of Charlie Kaufman and the white-collar-workplace losers of Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell. Continue reading...

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