The disappointing comedy Friendship has a promising premise: what happens when a very uncool guy is invited into friendship by a very cool guy.
Craig (Tim Robinson) is socially tone deaf and has a gift for turning every situation into a gaffe. He meets his new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd), who brims with savoir faire and has the cheeky grin of, say, Paul Rudd. Paul invites Craig along on a mischievous adventure and over for beers with Austin’s bro friends. In fact, Austin seems to live inside a guy-fantasy beer commercial. Craig has been a stick in the mud but is now intoxicated by the possibilities of being a popular kid.
Of course, Craig, devoid of charm and emotional intelligence, just can’t keep up, and his clumsiness – and his insistence on doubling down on his gaffes – sabotage his social aspirations. When he tries to hang with Austin’s friends, a social disaster results. When he tris to impress his wife Tami (an excellent Kate Mara) by duplicating his adventure with Austin, it’s a real disaster, not just a social one.
The situation is grist for a very smart story. Every one of us has felt socially inadequate or left out at some point. Every one of us has done something dorky in public. So the audience is ready to identify with a movie character who is suffering from embarrassment and lack of social confidence.
The problem here is that Craig isn’t a well-meaning, lovable loser that we can root for. As created by writer-director Andrew DeYoung and played by Tim Robinson, he’s a jerk. And the screenplay misses the easy opportunities to explore the male fantasy of the perfect buddy.
There some LOL moments in Friendship, the best being when Tami reports on what occurred when she was stuck in a municipal sewer. And it develops that even Austin is hiding an uncool secret.
After a while, we stop cringing for Craig, because we no longer care about him. Friendship is a swing-and-a-miss.
