Friendship

Queasily uncomfortable and acutely disturbing portrait of social awkwardness and ultimate failure finds Robinson’s underplayed portrait of skin-crawling obliviousness providing competition for De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin – in fact, there are strong resonances here with Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY, especially in Rudd’s smooth-talking, fake it/make it media personality, and the same audacious tendency to hold nervous tension to breaking point without the release of laughter. Amps up the tension considerably in the final third, and while the ultimate resolution is perhaps a little too derivative of both COMEDY and TAXI DRIVER to an extent, DeYoung has overall crafted a more poignant, and socially relevant portrait of masculine failure for the 2020s.