FRIENDSHIP (2004)
This review may contain spoilers.
I love Tim Robinson skits, but there's a reason why most of them are like 3-5 minutes long. The longer a cringe comic fumbles spends time in a [more-or-less] realistic universe populated by [more-or-less] straight foils, the more you have to start showing the medium- and long-term consequences of their actions—and those mostly ain't funny. You could ride this out to its logical dark endpoint, crossing the line into thriller or even horror, and in its best moments FRIENDSHIP seems like it's ramping up to "go there," but in its final act it loses its nerve. As it flails about in search of jokes, the character psychologies get flimsier, the actions less plausible, and the final outcomes ultimately feel pretty hedged.
addendum from bluesky:
⌘ THE CHAIR COMPANY is, for my money, more successful than FRIENDSHIP because most everyone in its world is unhinged to a greater or lesser degree—it isn't just Robinson freaking out a world full of norms—and this maps onto a "paranoid thriller" template better than you might suspect
jbushnell
