Friendship

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

[mr_rating_result]

Andrew DeYoung (“Would It Kill You to Laugh?”) crafts a dark comedy that is almost, but not quite, a hybrid of SNL and Patricia Highsmith. 

“Friendship” is engaging and apprehensive. The only drawback is its uneven tone, oscillating between comedy and scathing drama. The film ultimately takes the easier exit in choosing comedy, but it is boosted by its fine performances, mainly headed by comedian Tim Robinson, known for his uncomfortable comedy sketches.

Milquetoast and awkward Craig (Tim Robinson) returns a mistakenly delivered package to his neighbor, the empathetic and gentle TV weatherman Austin (Paul Rudd). Craig is uncomfortable and wooden, yet there is something about the pale and clumsy man that Austin is attracted to. The two make light small talk and Craig walks away happier. No one outside of his wife ever talks to him.

That night Craig’s wife (Kate Mara) tells him that he’s invited to a party at Austin‘s house. Craig reluctantly accepts. After witnessing some uncomfortable singing, Craig nervously runs into a sliding glass door that shatters. Fearing ejection from the party, Craig is taken by surprise. The other men think him charming and popular.

From then on, Austin and Craig go on adventures together down the sewer system of city hall and into the woods to pick mushrooms.

They are inseparable.

During a loose boxing match, Craig, eager to prove himself in the eyes of others, knocks Austin nearly unconscious. Mortified by his mistiming and violent accident, Craig eats a bar of soap in a desperate attempt to repent and make Austin’s friends laugh. All exit. Austin turns away without a word.

The next day, Austin tells Craig that he is ending the friendship. Craig is devastated. He walks away in dejection.

Tim Robinson is perfect, and the actor never hits a false note. Movie buffs will notice something of Ernest Borgnine’s “Marty” in Robinson’s role. One can feel the sadness and the want in his blank searching face. Eerily, as if in a dream, Craig’s son (Jack Dylan Grazer) acts as a lover to his mother while Austin’s friends confess romantic love to Craig’s wife in front of him.

But in the last third, the film takes a detour into silliness with Craig purchasing a psychedelic secreting frog in the hopes of escaping his unyielding existence without the company of men.

The beginning and middle of this film is perfect in its depiction of co-dependency, rejection and lust for acceptance. Craig’s implication of crime and the abandonment of his wife propels the film into a madcap tone that doesn’t fit with the earlier weird pathos.

Still, Robinson is nearly poetic and utterly believable as a truly awkward man who only tries too hard to be liked.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com