It’s hilarious. It’s awkward. It’s ‘Friendship’

We keep hearing that we’re in a male-loneliness epidemic. The agonizing and hilarious “Friendship” makes it feel like the Black Death. Written and directed by debuting filmmaker Andrew DeYoung (TV’s “PEN15,” “Shrill”), this bromance trembles as guy meets man-child, guy dumps man-child and man-child burns everything down. It’s a reflection of the adult struggle to make new friends as seen through a spook-house mirror.

Tim Robinson plays Craig, a dad who is delighted to pal around with his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd), until a boys’ night ends in a punch and, eventually, someone calling the cops. Craig’s grief over his lost BFF makes him fume with denial, anger, bargaining and depression. Acceptance is impossible. Spontaneous nose bleeds happen twice.

Elsewhere, Robinson has become the poster boy for male social anxiety: the pariah who is so flummoxed by the rules of polite chitchat that he crosses the line and bursts into tears. On his cult sketch show “I Think You Should Leave,” he’s won two consecutive Emmys for the way he layers vulnerability under anger, like the skit in which he gets himself kicked out of an adults-only ghost tour and blubbers, “I don’t know what is going on, but somehow our wires got crossed!” Robinson has never claimed that his characters are on the spectrum, but autistic viewers have made fan videos about how much they relate to his confusion.

Only 5’ 8”, Robinson can appear threateningly huge. Choices that would diminish other actors — oversized jackets, hunched shoulders, public mockery — only make him puff up bigger. When Craig senses humiliation on the horizon, he goes on the attack. He wants desperately to fit in, but he’d rather interrupt, challenge and correct than let the tension relax. “Friendship” looks and feels so much like a feature-length extension of “ITYSL” that it’s worth pointing out that DeYoung came up with the script idea in 2018 before that show existed. The movie would be a totally different animal if it starred, say, Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell. Perhaps working in television has trained DeYoung to adapt to other’s sensibilities before insisting on his own.

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“Friendship” surrounds Robinson with normalcy: filler talk, obliging laughter and the kind of handsome lighting you’d see in a home-insurance commercial. Craig somehow has a lovely wife (Kate Mara) and believable son (the always engaging Jack Dylan Grazer). Mara’s sensible Tami sets up the tone in the opening scene, which takes place at a couples’ support group. She delivers the kind of halting, relatable monologue about sexual dysfunction and malaise that you could find in an earnest indie movie. Craig, naturally, quashes the mood. “I’m orgasming fine,” he blurts.

It’s impossible to imagine why Tami ever agreed to marry him in the first place, as she chooses to spend most of her time with her ex (Josh Segarra), a hunky and sensitive fireman. Meanwhile, Craig swoons over Austin, a local weatherman whose hang-out ideas — mushroom harvesting, urban spelunking, starting a punk rock garage band — give Craig genuine joy. No one’s ever wanted to be his friend before. (Craig is so tough to be around that we’re more likely to side with his bullies, like Eric Rahill, who has a great bit part as a nasty co-worker.) When Craig spots Austin cracking a corny one-liner on the nightly news, he smiles like Santa Claus is real.

Austin’s lush mustache and hammy Southern drawl aren’t quite in sync with the tone; Rudd seems stuck in the Ferrell version of the film. I’m fine with the idea that Austin is a bit of a phony who pretends he doesn’t own a cellphone. But when he admits to the lie, nothing happens. (At least the fib leads to several scenes at a phone store with Billy Bryk’s very funny clerk.) The film doesn’t really care about anyone else’s psychology; it wants to keep Craig marooned on Oddball Island. Empathy would be too easy.

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Still, Rudd and Robinson’s scenes together are great. They get laughs even going through the ritual of ordering a sandwich at Subway. And Rudd’s made an inverted version of this movie before, 2009’s sweeter and raunchier “I Love You, Man,” where he played the wallflower with a buddy (Jason Segel) who teaches him to scream. There won’t be any learning here, although Craig tries and fails to mimic Austin in his absence.

Robinson didn’t invent this kind of cringe comedy. One of the most sublime examples of the form traces back to Anton Chekhov’s wordless short play, “The Sneeze,” a proto-“SNL” skit about a man who accidentally wheezes on the back of a government official’s neck and in his escalating desperation to normalize his oopsie suffers a breakdown and dies. But “Friendship” feels exactly right for exactly right now. Cultural norms are shifting just as in-person communities are breaking down. At any given second in public, you could go from invisible to starring in a viral video that puts you on blast.

It’s hard to be a human. No wonder Craig feels more like a bunch of possums in a skin suit. By everything I’ve seen of Robinson off-camera (he doesn’t seem to enjoy press), he’s a lovely man raising two teenagers with his high school sweetheart. He plays gauche on our behalf.

Although this is his first major movie role after his show’s breakout success, I can see him on that clown-to-thespian trajectory that ends with an Oscar to go with his Emmy. For now, however, I want to apologize to DeYoung. He won’t get the credit he deserves for this terrific comic torment because it just feels like another Tim Robinson masterclass in self-immolation. Maybe that’s an awkward thing to say. Maybe it’s fine.