‘Friendship': Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd poke fun at men who bond
Tim Robinson, who has become a cult comedic star with his show 'I Think You Should Leave,' possesses the hulking, humorously awkward physicality of a socially inappropriate goofball who's just big enough to be dangerous. In 'Friendship,' his breakout feature turn, Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a good-natured lummox living in a dreary Nowheresville called Clovis, USA — which could easily be a stand-in for suburban Detroit, where Robinson grew up. Craig works for a generic tech company called Universal Digital Innovations, where they create addictive apps for corporations and political candidates.
Craig lives in his own hyper-screened, self-satisfied world, even when he's in the cramped split-level house he shares with Tami (Kate Mara), a recent cancer survivor who runs a flower-arranging business out of their dining room, and their teenage son Stevie (Jack Dylan Grazer). Tami worries about her disease recurring and whether she'll ever orgasm again; at a cancer support group, Craig blithely shares that 'everything is awesome' and that he's 'orgasming just fine.'
In other words, Craig exists in a goldfish bowl brimming with blissful oblivion: That's not privilege or entitlement he's swimming in, it's just water. But Craig's complacency will get a considerable sloshing when he meets Austin (Paul Rudd), who has just moved in down the street. Taking a page from the observational humor of the late Lynn Shelton, with nods toward the Apatovian School of Modern Male Anxiety and the cringe comedy of Larry David, 'Friendship' chronicles the morphology of a middle-aged man crush, from its besotted onset of beers, boxing and a brotastic version of 'My Boo' to its ignominious flameout. There's a thin line between the campy antics of 'I Love You, Man' and the far darker malignancy at the heart of 'The Cable Guy': 'Friendship' lives in that liminal space, mining its queasiest, quirkiest nuances for absurdist laughs and less comfortable squirms.
Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, making his feature debut, 'Friendship' possesses the ungainly pacing and structure of one of Robinson's sketches extended beyond its comfort level: When a character takes a (very funny) hallucinogenic trip, the set piece feels of a piece with the choppy dream logic of a movie in which time and space are flattened, and characters pop up out of nowhere. (I'm still not sure the audience was properly introduced to Austin's wife, played by Meredith Garretson in a thankless role.) For every scene that feels daring and boldly spontaneous, another feels on-the-nose or falls oddly flat.
Rudd brings his reliable commit-to-the-bit resolve to a role for which he's supremely well-suited, and he brings his own history: It turns out that Austin is a local TV weatherman, giving 'Friendship' the vibe of 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy' fanfic. (Which, when you think about it, isn't such a bad idea.) DeYoung has enlisted an able supporting cast to provide services as foils for Craig's more bizarre behavioral doglegs. But 'Friendship' is clearly intended as a showcase for Robinson, whose manic focus and imposing stature — made all the more hegemonic by an enormous parka — lend him an air of lumbering, untethered menace: This dad bod can been weaponized. His everyman with an edge keeps the audience continually guessing. Is Craig creepy or just refreshingly unfiltered? Are we rooting for him or mentally taking out a restraining order? Is this a message from the skeptical outer reaches of the manosphere? Or a cry for help from its loneliest inner craw?
It's just that constant sense of instability that 'Friendship' is going for; in the meantime, it offers a modestly sharp-eyed critique of the materialist excesses and aspirational deceits of 21st-century American life. To their credit, Robinson and DeYoung know their limits. They don't overreach or stay past their welcome, and they stick the landing with unexpected finesse. 'Friendship' is primarily a movie for Robinson's hardcore fans, but, for the Tim-curious, it serves as an amusing — if haphazard and uneven — introduction to his distinctive sensibility. If you like your mortification with a side of unassuming Midwestern brio, you just might have a friend in Clovis, USA.
R. At AMC Georgetown 14, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema DC Bryant Street and Angelika Film Center Mosaic. Contains profanity and some drug content. 101 minutes.
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Los Angeles Times
28 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
How a filmmaker couple's adoption story inspired the bloody dark comedy ‘I Don't Understand You'
A bloody horror-comedy isn't the genre that springs to mind as a 'love letter' to one's 5-year-old, but for Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig, it's the perfect way to express their devotion to their child. The married filmmakers started penning the semi-autobiographical screenplay as a therapeutic exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after adopting their son. 'With the tiredness of having a newborn, it was kind of our mutual catharsis during that time,' Craig said. But a deeply serious, emotional script about their difficult road to fatherhood didn't interest them. Instead, the final product begins as a lighthearted comedy then turns dark — complete with a few dead bodies. 'I Don't Understand You,' which hit theaters Friday, stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells as characters loosely based on Crano and Craig, who also co-directed the movie. The beginning of the story faithfully follows the real-life couple's journey to become fathers, including a heartbreaking experience with adoption fraud. They had been trying to adopt a child for nearly three years and felt weighed down by the challenges. In a twist of fate, they were matched with a birth mother just as they were traveling to Italy to celebrate their 10th anniversary. That trip was essentially a comedy of errors. Their car got stuck in a ditch during a relentless rainstorm and the couple was rescued by an old Italian woman and her family, whom they couldn't understand at all. When they told their friend — and the movie's eventual producer — actor and filmmaker Joel Edgerton about the travel nightmare, he encouraged them to get writing. But how did Crano and Craig go from crafting characters loosely based on themselves to making them (mostly accidental) murderers? By adapting their real-life coping mechanism to the film. 'We processed our own trauma around what happened to us personally through really dark comedy to each other,' Craig said. 'It just felt like that was the story we were prepared to tell.' 'Doing a polemical, flag-wavy, tear-jerky adoption movie felt like really the wrong vibe for us,' Crano added. As the couple described the process of making the film, they frequently finished each other's sentences. They were in sync despite being on a Zoom call from different coasts, with Craig in New York ahead of the film's premiere and Crano in L.A. Their overlapping responses seem to mirror their writing process — each is attuned to his partner's strengths and how his mind works, and they're both 'obsessed' with iteration, as Crano said, hoping to find the perfect turn of phrase or one-liner through repeated conversations. 'Not to interrupt, Brian,' Craig interjected at one point, 'but I think this is where you were going.' Kroll and Rannells' Dom and Cole, like Crano and Craig, learn the happy news of a match after adoption struggles, get their car stuck in a ditch on their anniversary trip and find refuge in an old Italian woman's home. Then the plot departs from reality and descends into macabre humor, with Cole accidentally pushing the old lady down the stairs, killing her. The duo didn't have much of the plot drawn out ahead of time. Crano said they just wanted to explore the question: 'What's the worst thing that they could do next?' For Kroll and Rannells, playing characters inspired by their directors enabled them to tap into the emotional heart of the story in an authentic way. Both actors, speaking to The Times via Zoom, said the directors were transparent about their adoption experience. 'It would be so funny if we had been like, 'Hey, what was it like when you found out that you weren't gonna get the baby?' and they were like, 'How dare you?'' Kroll quipped. 'But it was super helpful to have them as references and resources, but also at the same time, their willingness to let us make choices that may not have been exactly what they would have said or how they would have said it. David and Brian had a really clear vision for it, but also were quite open to things organically taking shape that was new to the film.' Rannells, who was working with a directing team for the first time, commended the duo's ability to run the ship collaboratively. 'They were very much always on the same page, which was great,' he said. 'That was maybe a little bit of a fear of going into it. I was like, 'How is this really going to work?' Like, 'Who are we listening to and how?' But they did it really seamlessly and it never felt overwhelming.' Much of the comedy Kroll and Rannells deliver is rooted in cultural misunderstandings. 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The couple's beloved dog Axel — who died just a few months after they wrapped shooting — is Dom and Cole's pet in the film and their young son, Washington, nicknamed 'Washy,' plays Dom and Cole's child in a brief scene. After seeing himself on the big screen at the film's debut at South by Southwest last year, Craig said the 5-year-old thinks he's a movie star. His one demand, they said, was to wear a cowboy costume for his scene, which they obliged. Crano and Craig said Washy will likely be allowed to watch 'I Don't Understand You' at a younger age than he should. 'The thing we really hope he gets out of it is the true message of the movie: 'What would you do for your child?'' Craig said. 'And we hope he really understands that we would do anything for him.' 'It is a love letter to him,' Crano said. 'In a purely strange way,' Craig added, finishing his husband's thoughts once more.
Los Angeles Times
30 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Want a Spider-Man-style kiss over a canyon? Call an elopement adventure photographer
Standing near the ledge of a magnificent canyon in Utah's Dead Horse Point State Park in the hours before sunset, my fiancée Gia and I looked each other in the eyes as we read our vows. But our officiant was nowhere in sight. That's because she was darting around the rocks, seeking the perfect angle to capture the moment with her camera. We hired Aimée Flynn as our photographer, but she became our officiant as well. She was also our location scout, wedding planner and even our tour guide. On the short hike to our ceremony spot, she told us about the park's flora and fauna and how 'Thelma and Louise' was filmed at a spot below where we stood. For Flynn, it's all part of her job as an elopement adventure photographer. Those who pursue this style of specialized wedding photography forgo old-school events for unique adventures, guiding couples through the most intimate ceremonies in nature's most spectacular settings. Flynn, who's based in Flagstaff, Ariz., photographed one couple embraced in a Spider-Man-style kiss while climbing on sheer rock face in Moab and another under the moonlight at Yosemite's Glacier Point after a middle-of-the-night hike in total isolation. Elopement adventure photography was born in earnest 10 years ago, pioneered by Maddie Mae, a wedding photographer who'd grown disillusioned with traditional weddings. 'There was a lot of discontentment from people feeling pressure to do things they didn't want, like the garter toss, or who had family members trying to make the event about them,' Mae recalls. 'Eighty percent seemed like they just wanted it to be over with.' There were already photographers taking couples out in gorgeous outdoor settings, but 'I didn't see anyone offering a full-day experience treated with the same importance as a big wedding,' Mae says. Mae changed the game — her elopement adventures took people wherever they wanted to go, giving them permission to have whatever kind of ceremony they desired. When she shot her first elopement in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, she was transformed. All the traditional wedding details were stripped away: There was no venue, no decor, no distracting crowd, no strict timeline. Just two people committing their lives to each other in nature, which she calls 'the most sacred of sanctuaries.' 'It was the first time I'd seen a couple where they were fully present in their eyes the entire day,' Mae says. 'It was the purest form of a wedding.' Other photographers followed in Mae's footsteps, especially after she began leading workshops on elopement adventures; the three other photographers I interviewed for this piece, Flynn, Traci Edwards and Karen Agurto, all took her courses. Elopement adventures remained a 'very niche' field until the COVID-19 pandemic, Flynn says. 'People couldn't have their big weddings but still wanted to get married.' (Mae received 284 inquiries in May 2020 alone.) The photographers emphasize that their job involves much more than taking beautiful pictures. 'These couples are rejecting the default template, which opens this world of possibilities,' Mae says. 'But then they wonder, 'Where do we go, what do we do, how can we make this ours?' Elopement photographers are experience creators.' For starters, the photographers double as trip planners. Sometimes, Agurto, who's based in Orange County and shoots entirely in California, says she has some blanket recommendations — no Death Valley in the summer or Big Sur during mudslide season, for instance — but each couple is different. Some have clear visions for their adventure while others are more open. Edwards, similarly, has seen all sorts of requests, from a couple who would go anywhere in the desert under a night sky (she chose Joshua Tree) to one who wanted to be photographed on a specific 11-mile hike in Washington. She encourages couples to choose a place that 'matches their relationship.' During the elopements, her husband Bill takes photos via drone and shoots video. (Mae, who is in a different echelon in terms of pricing and clientele, has photographed elopements in more than 20 countries, including at the Dolomites in Italy, the deserts in Namibia and glaciers in Iceland. She says at this point in her career, clients often give her free rein.) My fiancée and I knew we wanted to get married somewhere beautiful in a location new to both of us, and we found Flynn after searching online. We had originally planned for Canyonlands rather than Dead Horse Point — not because of the unromantic name but because we'd never heard of it. 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(We adopted that idea and it helped us savor the experience.) The photographers also make sure to give couples as much privacy as needed — that's what zoom lenses are for, Flynn notes, while Agurto adds that she offers to wear headphones during the vows. After exchanging vows and rings, Gia and I sipped prosecco, ate brownies and danced to Langhorne Slim's 'House of My Soul,' while Flynn continued shooting (taking a break only to share some bubbly), sometimes asking for specific poses but mostly letting us be. And while the ceremony is obviously the emotional centerpiece, the day doesn't end there. For us, the rest of the evening was almost as memorable, a mix of jaw-dropping beauty and carefree fun. Flynn took us to different spots for more photos as the sun was setting. Then she took out lanterns for us to pose with in the moonlight. Flynn's infectious enthusiasm made us feel like models or movie stars on a photo shoot. (Enhancing that feeling was the way people reacted when they saw us hiking in formal wedding attire and boots.) Later still, we drove to Arches National Park, with Flynn enjoying her work so much she went well beyond the four-hour window we had hired her for. The evening ended with Gia and I standing beneath North Window Arch, illuminated by the nearly full moon, with a sky full of stars behind us. It was as romantic and as visually stunning as it sounds. Because Flynn does her job so well, we were able to fully relax into the moment, trusting that we would have both our memories and exquisite photos to preserve this day forever.
Business of Fashion
an hour ago
- Business of Fashion
How to Master the Art of 'Trash Talk' Marketing
The trash talk being thrown around during the NBA Finals isn't just coming from the players but directly from the marketing departments of the sportswear brands that sponsor them. Minutes after the Oklahoma City Thunder eliminated the Minnesota Timberwolves from the playoffs last week, Converse came out with a video on Instagram depicting an ant seemingly being crushed by the Converse SHAI 001. Even casual basketball fans would recognise the diss: Timberwolves' star shooting guard – and Adidas athlete – Anthony Edwards' nickname is Ant-Man, while the SHAI 001 is the first signature sneaker by Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The post's caption read 'Not hard 2 believe. @shai is headed to the Finals.' This too was a play on Edwards' 'Believe that' Adidas campaigns, itself a trash talk masterpiece, including one ad where he tosses out pairs of rival signature basketball shoes to spotlight his own signature Adidas style. The author has shared an Instagram Post. You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future. 'It was really sharp, not heavy-handed, but a subtle nod [for Converse] to say 'Hey, we see you, we beat you, and we're moving on,'' said Derick Beresford, a sports marketing consultant who previously worked for the Brooklyn Nets and the consumer agency Team Epiphany, who added that the ad has helped Converse Basketball break out in a way it hasn't since the Dwyane Wade era in the 2000s. Trash talk is routine in the cutthroat worlds of soda and wireless carriers, but with a few notable exceptions is pretty rare in fashion. While notable fashion rivalries have surfaced between designers such as Guram and Demna Gvasalia, it's usually been reserved as a war of words since it's typically not chic to bring beef to the runway or glossy ad campaigns. Yet Converse isn't the only brand embracing the energy that comes with talking smack about your competitors. In May, Kiehl's teased that it would become the skincare amenity partner for the luxury New York City gym Life Time with shady posts that nodded to its viral breakup with Equinox last year. In October, the Australian drug store chain Chemist Warehouse recreated a Charlotte Tilbury ad that itself dissed beauty dupes to promote its lower-priced beauty products. Also last year, the cashmere label Naadam unfurled an Instagram campaign that took shots at its rival Quince. Within streetwear, Tremaine Emory's label Denim Tears released a collaborative capsule collection with artist Arthur Jafa in 2024 that addressed Emory's departure as the creative director of Supreme by flipping one of Supreme's iconic brand motifs into a slogan that commented on systemic racism. All these moments arrive with trash talk becoming a larger part of our cultural climate, so much that Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' diss record towards Drake topped Billboard charts and picked up five Grammy awards in February. Consumers are paying attention and are invested in the narratives created by talking smack. 'We're likely experiencing a rise in trash talk within product marketing because it's become more of an accepted form of public discourse,' said Rafi Kohan, a sports journalist who authored the book Trash Talk that explores the psychology and history behind bad-mouthing. Kohan traces trash talk back to biblical times—yes, the Prophet Isaiah penned what was essentially a diss record to the King of Babylon. But it plays especially well in the modern attention economy. Trash talk grabs eyeballs and creates an 'us versus them' narrative that calls upon a brand's audience to pick a side and defend it. So for brands, digging into a competitor can create a marketing moment that fosters a strong sense of customer loyalty and community while also establishing a narrative that positions them as the ones up top. Seizing the Narrative The author has shared an Instagram Post. You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future. That's what the emerging Baltimore-based skate label Carpet Company aimed for when it trash-talked a streetwear competitor named Mertra this year for allegedly copying the brand's viral Instagram video campaign for a heat-reactive jacket Carpet released in 2024. Carpet co-founder Ayman Abdeldayem says that when his customers first tagged the brand in the comments of Mertra's strikingly similar Instagram post in November (which was posted nearly 10 months after Carpet's) he laughed it off. The author has shared an Instagram Post. You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future. But upon seeing Mertra's post go more viral than Carpet's, leading Mertra to gain thousands of followers, and then noticing the brand delete comments on the post that credited Carpet for the concept, Abdeldayem decided to fire back when his label released another iteration of a heat-reactive jacket in January by copying Mertra's campaign. The author has shared an Instagram Post. You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future. 'We have very loyal customers but it didn't boost sales in any way. We more so used it as an opportunity to tell our side of the story without really having to explain it,' said Abdeldayem. 'People still go on that video, and comment, 'You copied Mertra' until they read the comments and then say 'My bad, I see that they copied you.'' Beresford adds that with social media being a dominant form of communication, it's important to understand that the audience trash talk marketing speaks to can be pieced together no matter how subliminal the message is. Both Carpet and Converse didn't tag or directly mention the brands they were targeting in their trash-talking adverts. Yet the message was still clear enough for those in the know. 'People are just more heightened to the awareness of it, and are seeing it play out,' said Beresford. When to Step Back While trash-talking can lead to virality and turn into clickbait headlines or content creator fodder, there is a line. Kohan said there aren't hard and fast rules for when trash talk goes too far, but when it works, it's usually promoting competition and pushing an opponent to perform better, rather than just tearing them down. Carpet's Abdeldayem said he's never one to start beef despite how his situation with Mertra unfolded. It wasn't the first time he felt his brand had been copied. However, in other instances, he took it more as a compliment and felt it wasn't worth engaging. Especially if it was done by brands he grew up on and admired. 'If I were to clap back towards something giant, someone I had a good relationship with, I would make a more solid judgment and not respond to it openly in public,' said Abdeldayem. Granted that a viral trash-talking campaign could potentially lead to a boost in revenue—Glossy reported that sales for Naadam increased by 47 percent during the week it took shots at Quince—brands need to know what their place is in the market and what's authentic to them before talking trash, Beresford said. He noted that Skechers could easily have gone the Converse route with Knicks forward OG Anunoby, who landed memorable moments this NBA season after signing with the brand in February. But that sort of marketing isn't in Skechers' DNA. The author has shared an Instagram Post. You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future. Timing is everything. Last week, Puma released T-shirts that played off the internet peanut gallery labeling Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton as 'overrated.' Beresford said while the concept was good, the execution failed to land a strong punch since it was released before the Pacers won the game that advanced them to the NBA Finals and arrived nearly a day after their last winning playoffs game. 'This game is all about being timely and you got to hit it when that conversation happens, when the moment is hot, because then you carry the conversation,' said Beresford.
