The New Yorker:

Justin Chang
Chang is a film critic for the magazine.

In Andrew DeYoung’s darkly amusing, strenuously off-kilter comedy “Friendship,” the cringe-tastic comedian Tim Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a middle-aged suburbanite who works at a company that produces “habit-forming” apps. The only thing remotely interesting about Craig is the actor playing him; somehow, Robinson—with his gee-willikers grin that can devolve into a gargoyle’s snarl—both typifies and transcends the role’s dumpy Everyman banality. “Friendship” is a slow-burning study in social deviance, propelled by Craig’s dunce-like blankness and awkward-creepy streak.

Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a local weatherman who has just moved into a house up the road, becomes Craig’s new best friend. After some initial bonding with this minor celebrity, Craig’s overbearing, under-the-skin strangeness—let’s call it a severe, sometimes violent disrespect for boundaries—triggers an inevitable falling out. Bizarre happenings ensue: a tense break-in, a mysterious disappearance, many physical altercations, and a hallucinatory trip. The movie itself is something of a trip; everything feels coated in a faint, menacing sheen of unreality, as if a slasher movie were just a wild twist or two away.

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