FRIENDSHIP

Film Information

To paraphrase William Butler Yeats and Marge Simpson: a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met. Hence the slight spring in the step of Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) as he heads out on a winter day to hand-deliver a misaddressed package to a neighbor. For a sedentary family man who doesn’t get out much, Craig needs all the exercise he can get, as well as any pretense for potential connection. Trudging parka-clad over the icy sidewalk leading to the home of one Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a recent arrival to their quiet residential street, he cuts a forlorn but hopeful figure.

Craig’s journey will be repeated several times in Andrew DeYoung’s debut feature Friendship . The film’s subject is nothing less than the male-bonding ritual, visualized as an uphill trek over slippery terrain. Austin is the new local weatherman. He’s not only fitter, happier and more productive than Craig, but cooler; he smokes hand-rolled cigarettes, plays in a pickup punk band, and talks shit about the mayor. Craig, whose mind is like a sponge, gloms onto Austin as a confidant and role model. But in trying to reinvent himself overnight in his new friend’s image, he comes on too strong. Imagine if Brad Pitt told Edward Norton he didn’t want to hang out with him any more in the first act of Fight Club , and you’re within punching range of Friendship ’s particular sweet spot of surreal bromance and slyly submerged critique of modern life.