Cringe comedy reaches exquisite new heights in this wickedly funny feature from Tim Robinson, star of the underrated Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. He plays an awkward office dork called Craig who develops an all-consuming bro-crush on a local weatherman and moustachioed alpha called Austin, played by Paul Rudd as a knottier, sadder version of Brian Fantana from Anchorman. There are initially loud echoes of another Rudd comedy, I Love You, Man, with the suggestion that Austin will be a liberating influence on Craig’s restricted, downbeat life — Austin plays in a rock band, hates smartphones and at night goes trespassing in government buildings for kicks.
• I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson review
The movie, however, quickly lurches into harsher, bleaker Baby Reindeer territory. Craig’s wife Tami (Kate Mara) is newly recovered from cancer and terrified of its possible return. That darkness, and the ever-present spectre of death, infects everything that subsequently happens to Craig in grey, rainy, perpetually autumnal Yonkers, New York.
There’s a mania to Craig’s obsession with Austin too, and a hint of barely concealed male rage, that suggests someone pushed to the edge of breakdown. Craig screams a lot, like a hysterical man-baby, over ostensibly trivial incidents such as losing a shoe or dropping a phone. He does a painful “comedy” voice, like Moe from the Three Stooges, when attempting to extricate himself from difficult social situations. An office meeting goes badly awry, for instance, and a supportive house party for the vulnerable Tami is ruined by Craig’s cloth-eared speech (think David Brent times a billion). Later on, as their marriage hits implosion point, Craig will stare at Tami wordlessly, gormlessly, through the reflection on the oven door, like a serial killer.
All of this, to be clear, is hilarious. Emotionally desolate, but hilarious. If Ingmar Bergman had made American indie comedies he might have started with Friendship. The film is written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, who previously worked with Taika Waititi on Our Flag Means Death. And yet the real “author” of the film is Robinson. He has produced here the kind of huge, domineering performance upon which entire movie careers are launched. This is surely just the beginning.
★★★★☆
15, 101min
In cinemas from Jul 18