Growing up, every group of male friends has that guy.
He’s a little unsure of himself, even among close pals. He’s a little strange, even by the gang’s own eclectic standards. He somehow always finds the wrong thing to say, even though no topic is off limits. Of course, the rest of the guys tease him for it—partly with malice, but eventually also some fondness. Because despite never really fitting in, he’s seemingly always around. Until one day you all go your separate ways.
What happens to a guy like this?
On the surface, he’s probably adapted to normal adult life. You might occasionally see his odd Facebook posts and chuckle (or scoff) to yourself, but you really don’t know how he’s doing. That is, until you sit through the 100 minutes of hilariously bleak cringe that is Andrew DeYoung’s breakout film, Friendship, which introduces a protagonist so painfully awkward that you’ll recognize him the moment you meet him: Craig Waterman is that guy.
Craig (Tim Robinson) passes as a normal guy, mostly. He has a pretty wife (Kate Mara), who’s more or less nice to him, even as she bites her tongue at his eccentricities. He has a teenage son who likes him well enough, even if Craig can never quite win his respect or admiration. His stable, if soulless, white collar job pays enough for the family to put their home up for sale, presumably to buy a larger one after Craig managed to competently, if not confidently, secure a promotion for himself. Everyone knows he’s a bit off—he’s the husband who makes uncomfortable jokes at his wife’s cancer support group, the dad who tactlessly asks about his teen son’s dating life, the colleague whose awkward small talk leaves him left out of office smoke breaks—but they mostly tolerate him despite occasional laughs at his expense. And although he has no friends, he’s perfectly content with his mediocre and insular life, indifferent to both vitality and connection—until his cool new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd), moves in down the block.
Austin is everything Craig’s not: he has an exciting job as a well-known weatherman, wide-ranging interests from music to ancient history, and a large pool of male friends. He’s got rizz and aura, as the kids say, with good hair to boot. When Craig’s wife sets the two up on a bro-date, Craig’s instantly charmed, even smitten, and eventually becomes obsessed. While the story unfolds along the lines of Fatal Attraction, there’s thankfully no implied homosexual undertone. Rather, this is the platonic, heterosexual, and all-too-common story of an adult man struggling to find “friendship.”
Far from a psycho-sexual thriller, Friendship is black comedy at its finest. Tim Robinson—best known for his cringe-inducing, “regular guy” sketch show I Think You Should Leave—injects his signature unhinged energy into every mundane interaction.
Austin introduces Craig to the rest of his friends, where the group of men hilariously bond by harmonizing Usher’s “My Boo” before engaging in a friendly boxing match. Of course, Craig is lanky and unathletic, so Austin lands a few effortless punches. But Craig also doesn’t quite get the subtle social nuances of friendly competition, and he sucker punches Austin in response, expecting the gang to cheer. Instead, they turn on him, and his “apology” only makes it worse: “I’ve been a bad boy,” he says, shoving a bar of soap into his mouth. The scene feels seemingly endless, as the men gawk at Craig’s increasingly excruciating struggle session. I laughed, along with the rest of the audience, but also wriggled a bit uncomfortably in my seat.
After only “a few good hangs,” Craig’s sheer social ineptitude proves to be an irredeemable embarrassment. Austin bluntly informs him, “I no longer wish to continue this relationship.” In a spiral as hilarious as it is pathetic, Craig spends the rest of the film losing his mind (and his dignity) trying to prove both to himself and Austin that he can be one of the guys. (From this point, there will be spoilers.)
Most men don’t crash out over a brief friendship fizzling, even if it ends on shameful terms. They don’t obsessively try to emulate their friend’s interests and hobbies, failing miserably, as Craig does, because they just don’t have his natural aura. They certainly don’t break into said friend’s house in a fit of insecurity, steal his gun, and then come back later to boys’ night uninvited to force “a hang” at gunpoint.
Raised in this new America, many millennial boys have grown up with a total ignorance of how to connect as adults, destined to forever be that guy.
But many men are seeing a sharp decline in their social lives, which makes them more likely to become that guy in the first place. Craig is certainly not alone in his desperation; surveys show that male social circles are shrinking. Whereas 40 percent of men said they had 10 or more “close friends” in 1990, that figure fell to 15 percent by 2021. An equal proportion now say they have “no close friends” at all, compared to just 3 percent in 1990. And even the film’s director isn’t immune.
“I saw myself kind of spinning out,” DeYoung told The New Yorker, detailing his own failed friendship that inspired the film (which he also wrote). Like Craig, he pathologizes friendship, explaining the “alienating quality” of meeting new groups of buddies, “even if they’re nice and trying to bring you in.” And despite seeking low-pressure friendships based on “just fuckin’ around and hanging out,” he’s too neurotic not to overthink it. He was even worried about how making the film together would affect his friendship with Robinson.
Yet to DeYoung, the struggle to find meaningful friendship isn’t a universal experience that all men (and all people) go through, but more a symptom of the time we live in: “It feels like the fascistic turn we’re experiencing now is a response to the invitation to vulnerability in the culture,” he explained. “We’re in a hyper-stimulated world, so it makes sense to go to the right, because it gives you at least a sense of control. Ideally, Craig embodies some of that rage of not knowing how to connect, yet deeply wanting to.”
So it’s no surprise that the film’s tagline reads, “Should Men Even Have Friends?” It feels tongue-in-cheek, and it probably is—but it nevertheless hits differently knowing the director thinks the best way to resist the rising tide of “fascism” is to preemptively neuter yourself and submit. Despite the banal lecture, however, Friendship is still one of the most entertaining movies of the year so far. And DeYoung is somewhat right, just not for the reasons he thinks.
The trial-and-error of adolescent social bonds offers a sort of training wheels to adult relationships. At that age, the stakes are quite low. Ostracized from one group? Join a new club, choose a new summer camp, sit at a different lunch table. Most guys eventually learn the game; after all, we’ve all been that guy at some point in our lives. But those who don’t are left floundering without the early life lessons they ought to have learned, now facing the real world stakes of adulthood, where the opportunities to make lasting friendships become far more scarce and loneliness is self-perpetuating. Boys used to have ample opportunities to experiment in this socialization, but for millennials and above, “boys will be boys”-type activities have increasingly fallen out of the social milieu. DeYoung’s “invitation to vulnerability” seems to imply that boys should simply act more like girls if they want to connect in the modern world, yet the film still romantically clings to these boyhood activities.
As two grown men, Austin and Craig partake in all the usual activities that teenage boys are apt to do: adventures in an abandoned aqueduct, rock bands, ancient knife collecting, and of course, fist fighting. But for boys today, these activities all risk being pathologized out of existence. What was once an “adventure” is now felony trespassing; good luck explaining that on your permanent record. Want to jam out? No, practice piano five hours a day so you can get a scholarship to Yale. Interest in historic knives? Careful, you might hurt yourself, and are these things even legal to own in your state? What about a little friendly boxing? Try explaining that in your deposition when another parent decides to press charges.
We’ve sacrificed normal boyhood interests and rituals on the altar of credentialism, safetyism, and downright litigiousness, and then we throw ADHD drugs at the problem to feel like it’s all okay. But boys are still paying the price down the line: these new social conventions are the problem, not the solution. Raised in this new America, many millennial boys have grown up with a total ignorance of how to connect as adults, destined to forever be that guy. So it’s no wonder that many, like Craig, are opting out entirely: surveys show 1 in 4 American men 15-34 experience “a lot” of “loneliness,” far outpacing the national average as well as international figures for men in the same demographic.
Endless ink has been spilled on derivative think pieces in recent years, tracking the problem along the same lines as DeYoung: If only men could ditch their so-called toxic masculinity, then they’d be just fine. Yet the film succeeds because it’s far less hostile: instead of reveling in the pain of that guy, it comes from a place of empathy by way of someone who feels like that guy himself. Because it’s written from this perspective, however, it’s imbued with a sense of insecurity, if not mild resentment, towards normal, well-adjusted, masculine men, and inevitably sees Austin as somewhat the bad guy.
You have to imagine DeYoung felt a bit of schadenfreude setting up Austin’s character as a fraud. His toupee slips—so much for that lush head of hair—and Craig’s hostage hang turns to a hilarious bonding moment, as he keeps the rest of the guys on the ground until Austin can refit his hairpiece. As the police drag Craig out, Austin throws him a wink.
It’s a cheeky ending, but is this really what male bonding hinges on today—the acknowledgement that masculinity itself is a lie, and that any pretense otherwise serves as an obstacle to having friends at all? In this formula, the necessary “vulnerability,” as DeYoung calls it—which is really just a neurosis—comes from rejecting traditional masculinity, but in reality it goes both ways: The new social push for men to be more “vulnerable” (i.e. feminine) can be just as alienating as the old standards of masculinity, with both dictating that men conform to a prescribed place on the Masculinity Map. Yet the real obstacle to friendship is trying so hard to connect in the first place, that social consensus, rather than organic relationships based on common interests and individuality, becomes the ultimate goal when it should simply be a downstream side effect. Strained efforts to make this into a tale of friendship-heuristics are but a symptom of the original failure, and the real “control” comes from reclaiming a sense of personal agency amidst overbearing social pressure.
Social bonds come from the vulnerability of revealing your true self to others, knowing they may or may not feel a connection; if they do, your bond is that much stronger for it. That’s nothing new, and Americans of all stripes could use a little more of it. But the path to making friends isn’t thinking (and stressing) about it as if friendship is a college exam to ace or a punishment to avoid, and the lesson modern men need to hear more than anything else is to just chill out: do things with other people, things you actually like and think are worthwhile, and don’t obsess over whether they’re socially optimized. Because the more you worry about being that guy, the more likely you are to become him.
