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What a journey Paul Rudd has been on. This man has been in his late thirties for at least a century at this point, and he’s been a part of it all, from the robustly respectable comedies for teens and adults alike, all the way to the $388.4 million vat of regret know only as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Still, Rudd probably had some good times in the MCU‘s heyday, right? Well, maybe not enough to keep from signing on to Friendship, the upcoming comedy that will team him with Tim Robinson for a thoroughly A24-coded (that is, unconventional) time. As you can see from the trailer below, Friendship has a bit of an attitude when it comes to modern franchise fare like Marvel.
Near the end of the trailer, Tim Robinson’s character meekly suggests seeing “a new Marvel” that’s “supposed to be nuts” so as to get out of a social engagement with his new neighbor, played by Paul Rudd. The joke being that Robinson’s character would prefer regrettably cheap entertainment over socializing (although, as we’ll get into in a minute, maybe we can’t blame him).
Now, you shouldn’t be taking pot shots at Marvel unless you’re prepared to walk the (cinematic) walk, yourself. Luckily for Friendship, this trailer suggests that an absolute monster of a dark comedy is closing in on us, and the best part is that we barely know what’s going on here.
IMDb’s description of the film — which premiered at TIFF this past September — describes it as follows: “When new neighbor Brian threatens his quiet life, Craig Waterman struggles to protect his family’s security.”
And yet, the first half of this trailer suggests that Friendship centers on a budding dynamic of healthy masculinity between Robinson’s Craig and Rudd’s Brian. But then, around two-thirds of the way in, an unattributed quotation heralds “An absolute nightmare,” and it’s clear that another shoe or three will be dropping in this film.
But Brian doesn’t seem to be the problem, per se. He tells Craig he wants to end the friendship, which appears to send the latter into an obsessive spell of indignance not unlike that of Colin Farrell’s Padraic in The Banshees of Inisherin. But what are these two gents beefing over? And how did Paul Rudd manifest such a fantastic mustache?
All this to say that A24 is doing a sincerely bang-up job of reeling in potential viewers with this doggedly mysterious Friendship trailer; a merit missed by too many franchise films, whose trailers mostly consist of four helpings of CGI noise, and exactly zero (0) attempts to tease a unique plot beat. And yes, that includes those new Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four trailers, if only because Marvel doesn’t have recent history on its side.
Friendship drops into theaters this May, and it’s certainly set itself up as a plunge we ought to take (the current 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t hurt, either). The question, then; did that dig at Marvel come from a place of culturally-aware honesty? Or does it betray Friendship’s cynicism and insecurity about its own storytelling ability? We’ll just have to wait and see.