Alt-comedian Tim Robinson is not an overnight success. He cut his teeth on comedy mainstays like Saturday Night Live and Late Night With Seth Meyers. Guest spots Comedy Bang! Bang! and Documentary Now! preceded his true mainstream breakthrough: the Netflix sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave on which he is the main star. The sketches on Leave all follow a familiar pattern: Robinson plays a well-meaning, but unstable man who tries and spectacularly fails to participate in polite society. (For variety’s sake, sometimes the central figure is played by Tim Heidecker, Patti Harrison, or Bob Odenkirk, instead of Robinson.) The series is an unequivocal hit, even if its execution is inconsistent. The most ingenious part of the show is that, even if a sketch isn’t funny, it’s so short that it moves on to the next one in no time.

So you could color me skeptical at the prospect of Friendship, a movie that basically works like an I Think You Should Leave sketch stretched over one hundred minutes. Can Robinson – in his irate, untamed delivery – really sustain a feature film in character? Writer-director Andrew DeYoung obviously knows the performer that he’s dealing with. This is DeYoung’s feature debut but he’s been a veteran of television directing for over a decade. Some of the shows he’s worked on (PEN15, I Love That For You), possess a similar spirit to Robinson’s caustic sensibility. DeYoung has sole credit on the screenplay of Friendship, but it’s obvious to anyone watching that it’s crafted with Robinson in mind. Its many laughs will be familiar to those who’ve watched the Netflix show. Though I’m confident those unfamiliar will find this quite funny as well.

Robinson plays Craig, a married digital marketer trying to sell his home on an anonymous American street. His wife, Tami (Kate Mara), works from home as a florist. She expresses a lot of frustration at the state of their lives, which Craig is mostly oblivious to. He does notice all the references she makes to her ex-boyfriend Devon, which he certainly doesn’t care for. Their teenaged son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), takes Craig with a grain of salt, and mostly sides with his mother about his emotional unavailability. Things changes when Craig meets his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd), a mustachioed weatherman who charms Craig and invites him over for a beer. Austin is welcoming, clues Craig into his hobbies and his interests, and opens up a new, exciting world that Craig had never imagined.

If you know Tim Robinson, you know that Craig will eventually do something to make the relationship go sideways, and that once that happens, he will have an oversized reaction that only makes matters worse. It brings me great pleasure to report that knowing all of this going in does practically nothing to ruin your enjoyment of the movie. Like his television sketches, the film unveils itself through a series of non-sequiturs that each heighten the reality of what you see. The subjective nature of Robinson’s storytelling style means you ultimately feel for Craig and his constant emotional breakdowns, and the excellent directing from DeYoung makes the quotidian normalcy of Austin and Tami feel almost alien by comparison. Despite the point of the comedy being that nobody understands Craig, Friendship works because the audience understands him.

I do feel like Friendship ultimately is more than just a feature-length I Think You Should Leave sketch, but I also don’t think that calling it such should be considered an insult. DeYoung places Robinson in successful comedic (and dramatic) positions, and finds the proper calibration to make the aggressive nature of his comedy receptive to everyone. Paul Rudd may be the greatest non-comedian comedic actor we’ve ever seen, and his straight man performance here is the perfect example why. Rudd absorbs Robinson’s antics, and touches Austin with enough of his own eccentricity to get the audience on Craig’s side. Rudd gets laughs, but he mostly gives Robinson the space to shine. His generosity as a performer is what has sustained his career, and what will likely keep him in the movies for as long as he’d like.

Personally, I’m only a recent convert to Tim Robinson. What once seemed obnoxious now feels endearing, and Friendship is the best thing that he’s ever done. DeYoung’s script is rife with outrageous flourishes, but the central crisis of Craig’s life – can he coexist with anyone? – is so centrally focused that the movie doesn’t require the laughs to be compelling. But the laughs certainly help, and he keeps them coming frequently enough that you never feel the bait-and-switch of so many other indie comedies. As Craig’s put-upon wife, Kate Mara is wonderful. She has a line delivery near the end of the movie that will stay in my mind for a very long time. It’s one of the few times in the film (and his career, probably) that Robinson reacts to something outrageous as opposed to inspiring said reaction. Which is proof that he’s really evolving as a performer.

 

Written and Directed by Andrew DeYoung