Friendship

You may have walked out of Andrew DeYoing’s Friendship not because of the theme of an anomie which is as old if not older than Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger. Tim Robinson plays Craig Waterman a malaprop market executive to Paul Rudd’s Austin Carmichael a tv weather anchor and sometime punk rock guitarist. Craig falls for Austin big time. It’s more subliminally homoerotic, though isn’t idealization tantamount to infatuation? Outsiderdom which is ostensibly what the movie is about is generally part of a  fabric made up of more than one pattern. Friendship suffers from perseveration (yes real friendship does too--ed). At one point  Craig sinks so low in his abjection that he eats soap. It’s as if the director were afraid you didn’t get the idea. In fact DeYoung is a little like his character who is always overplaying his hand. Woody Allen made the schlepp and anti-hero into cultural archetypes which unfortunately didn't rescue him from opprobrium. But the joke is really on the director here since in some circles Craig will still rise above the dullards who will be mockingly dismissed. One other criticism, Craig is a father and executive. He wouldn't have gotten any where, if he didn’t possess some degree of know how, the movie's script doesn’t accord him.

read "The Wasteland" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn