Review: ‘Friendship’

2025 / Dir. Andrew DeYoung

☆ 3.5/5

Watch if you like: The Cable Guy, Slipknot needle drops, Connor O’Malley cameos, and feeling redeemed for that awkward thing you said that one time. 

It’s now been four days since I saw Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd and I’m still laughing. Following the kindling and collapse of neighbors Craig (Robinson) and Austin’s (Rudd) bromance, Friendship plunges into the zeitgeist of the male loneliness epidemic, exploring with bombast just how hard it is for some men to make and keep friends. “You all accepted me way too fast,” Craig says to Austin in the throes of their fallout. “You can’t do that. You made me free too free.” 

Up to par (and then some) with what audiences have come to expect from a Tim Robinson sketch, Friendship is unhinged and relentless in all the best ways. Between its script always taking you two steps further than you expected to go, a perfectly deployed Robinson and Rudd firing on all cylinders, and legit LOL moments that will stick to you like a pestering neighbor, Friendship is the buddy comedy I never knew I needed. 

But just like making new friends, audiences should proceed with caution. While I’m still laughing remembering several of the film’s hilariously cringe moments, it is not your Mom and Dad’s traditional comedy. In fact, it’s not anybody’s traditional comedy. It very much plays by its own rules, sometimes to a fault with respect to pacing and tone. But if you freshen up with a few I Think You Should Leave sketches on YouTube and submit to the experience, you’re in for one hell of a night at the movies.