‘Friendship’ review: Tim Robinson learns that you shouldn’t be friends with Paul Rudd in a hilariously weird new comedy
5/5 drum sets
You might think you want to be friends with Paul Rudd but think again. Okay to be clear, you don’t want to be friends with Austin in the new A24 film Friendship.
Craig (Tim Robinson) brings a package over to his new neighbors. Austin is a local weather man who is new to the neighborhood and the two quickly bond over a weird love of historical artifacts and breaking into buildings via the sewer system. But what works about Friendship is the comedy that Robinson has been known for getting to shine through in director and writer, Andrew DeYoung’s work.
It is hard to talk about this movie outside of saying that it is just absurd in the best of ways. Craig’s marriage is strained after his wife Tami (Kate Mara) keeps going out with her ex boyfriend Devin (Josh Segarra) instead of being with their family. So Craig leans on his friendship with Austin a bit too much and it turns sour quickly.
Instead of letting that go, Craig upends his entire life to try and figure out what is really going on between himself and Austin and it is just so off the wall weird that it really works. And who doesn’t love when Paul Rudd is rocking a mustache?!
Friendship reminds you how out there comedy can be and why that works. DeYoung’s use of zooming in, weird circle framing, and music cue makes this truly one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a while. It isn’t often that you find yourself lost in a comedy as easily as Friendship. The minute the film started, I knew what I was getting myself into and it really just keeps you hooked from beginning to end.
You will say “WHAT?!” out loud
Like any good comedy, Friendship has some bangers of jokes that I will think about for a long time. Like Craig talking about one of Austin’s friends and saying that he was thinking about his “busty daughter.” There is a running theme of Craig keeping a secret for Austin but also neither of them really being friends and then Conner O’Malley shows up and I instantly said “oh boy here we go” out loud.
My point is that Friendship is the kind of that makes me believe that we can still have genuinely original comedies that don’t insult people and are just weird enough that you can’t stop laughing at them. Watching Robinson try to be a cool guy who just wants to hang is genuinely one of the most uncomfortable things on this planet and yet I loved every second of it.
Would I be upset if Paul Rudd told me he was ending our friendship? Definitely but watching that happen with Craig and Austin ended up being one of the most surprising movies of 2025 so far. Just genuinely one of the funniest movies I have ever seen and that’s a testament to DeYoung’s genius filmmaking as well as the iconic comedy chops of both Rudd and Robinson.
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