PFS SpringFest 2025 presents Friendship and The Threesome

So far at the festival, one film has stood out in particular: Friendship, a dark comedy from writer/director Andrew DeYoung. A Toronto International Film Festival debut last fall, it represents the first movie starring role for Tim Robinson, the co-creator and star of the Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.

Translating Robinson’s act to the big screen

Friendship was the only film on the SpringFest program to add a second screening; it also appeared to be the only one that was available only via rush tickets, and the lines to get in were the longest I’ve ever seen at Film Society East.

It felt like the main event of SpringFest, much like I Saw the TV Glow was last year. Audiences were counting on the buzz for the film at previous festivals, as well as the chance to check out whether Robinson’s act translates to the big screen.

The answer? It certainly does.

The core premise of most ITYSL sketches is that an oddball (usually played by Robinson himself) enters a social situation, whether at a party, in a workplace, on a date, or on a ghost tour, and does something weird that results in an argument. Robinson pretty much does the same thing in Friendship, and while having the same guy do that repeatedly for a 100-minute movie is a big risk, the film pulls it off perfectly.

Robinson stars as Craig, a suburban guy with a wife (Kate Mara), a teenage son, and a job at an evil company that seems to resemble an ad agency that uses tech for nefarious purposes.

Suffering with the difficulty of making new friends, a common malady of adult men, Craig meets his neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd), the two hit it off, and Craig tastes the promise of actually having a friend group. But things quickly go awry, leading to a movie full of nervous (but very hilarious) tension.

Paul Rudd’s best performance in years

There was already a Hollywood movie, 2009’s I Love You Man, that was also about an adult man who has trouble making male friends, which also happened to co-star Paul Rudd. But Friendship is very, very different in tone. It bears almost no resemblance to any studio comedy I’ve ever seen.

The trailer quoted critic reviews calling the film both “an absolute nightmare” and “the funniest thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” and both are accurate, as the film played like gangbusters to the Friday-night crowd at SpringFest. There were a lot of things that everyone laughed at—and also quite a few subtle moments at which one or two people let out isolated guffaws.

Robinson more than capably carries the film, as a guy who’s certainly weird, but endearing enough that we don’t turn against him completely.

Rudd starts the film essentially playing his Anchorman character, a TV weatherman who’s always the coolest guy in the room. But the movie subtly shows that when he switches to working in morning TV, the forced cheerfulness all but ruins his life.

Rudd’s been on something of a losing streak lately (the recent Death of a Unicorn might have been the worst he’s ever been as a character other than Ant-Man) but this is his best performance in years. And the eternally youthful actor gets to play someone who’s visibly aging, for once.

Great gags

I could take a few paragraphs here to list all the great gags, but I’d rather not spoil them. I’ll leave it at this: I’ve long maintained that my least favorite comedy move is when characters get stoned, and the movie detours for five minutes with stupid-looking animated hallucinations. Friendship hints very strongly that it’s about to do just that, before swerving away in a truly inspired way.

Friendship heads into theaters in May from A24. I’m not sure it’ll be a runaway hit right away—after all, I Think You Should Leave has a devoted audience, but I’ve never seen it in the Netflix top 10. It seems destined to become a cult favorite, though. After seeing it in a theater with an audience, I can’t recommend it enough.

The Threesome

The night before Friendship, Springfest got underway with The Threesome, another film that combines comedy with a lot of discomfort and cringing. It has a plot that seems lifted from a mumblecore film from 2007, but the soul of an older, more screwball-ish rom-com.

For a romantic comedy, it’s a fun high concept: Connor (Jonah Hauer-King, the prince from the live-action Little Mermaid) has long been in love with Olivia (Zoey Deutch), who got together with him once but just wants to be friends. One night, Connor meets Jenny (Ruby Cruz, who played the murdered girl’s friend on Mare of Easttown). He flirts with her, Olivia does too, and eventually the three engage in the titular activity.

I won’t spoil what happens next, but it results in the three of them having connections that last beyond that one night.

The tone is sexy, then silly, then very serious. The three are likable performers, even if the characters they play aren’t so likable. I also couldn’t help but notice that the three of them look very familiar: Deutch resembles Parker Posey more each passing year, Hauer-King looks a lot like a young James Franco, and Cruz looks a great deal like Franco’s old Freaks and Geeks co-star, Linda Cardellini. The super-talented Jaboukie Young-White is also on hand as a gay sidekick; he’s someone who should be at the center of way more movies.

The biggest laugh in the film, though, doesn’t come from anything the actors do—there’s a truly inspired gag involving a trombone. The film is set in the somewhat nontraditional location of Little Rock, which I appreciated, even if it left the promising idea of Bill Clinton horndog jokes on the table.

Plot twists and add-ons

The plot, however, is just a bit too dependent on jarring plot twists that keep falling out of the sky. Also, this is one of those films where I could tell the central couple was bad for each other and was rooting for them not to get together.

The Threesome was directed by Chad Hartigan, who was on hand for a Q&A after the showing (he also cameos as a guy in a coffee shop who overhears what happens and does a spit take). He actually shared some details about what he thinks happened to the characters after the plot was over, which I appreciated, although it might have been better to actually include that in the movie.

While it hasn’t been officially announced, The Threesome is set for theatrical release this fall, Hartigan said during the Q&A.