Paul Rudd And Tim Robinson's New A24 Movie Looks Totally Gonzo, And I've Never Been More Excited To Be Uncomfortable In A Theater

One of the funniest people currently walking the planet — not the entire thing all at once — is SNL vet and I Think You Should Leave creator Tim Robinson, whose very presence incites unavoidable calamities of the highest order. Which brings us to the upcoming A24 movie Friendship, which looks as if it might just be the most uncomfortable theatrical experience of any 2025 movie release, though that might be too small a pool for comparisons.

Fresh off of delivering my personal favorite of all the best Super Bowl ads this year — the E.T.-spoofing Pizza Rolls ad with Sam Richardson — Robinson is set to keep viewers squirming for far longer than the average sketch-length mayhem that fans are used to. He’s set to play Craig Waterman, a seemingly normal family guy who gets befriended by an unpredictable force of nature named Brian, as portrayed by a mustachioed Paul Rudd. (I don’t know how he makes that soul patch seem normal, but he does.)

Without further ado, and ahhh-don’t, check out the Friendship trailer in full below.

This is the kind of movie that makes me wish I was a turtle, just so I could have a shell to fit all of my limbs and extremities inside whenever Tim Robinson is on the screen. But like, with a little peephole in the shell so that I can still see some of it.

Just to throw a rhetorical question out there: did everyone else have the un-ending feeling that Friendship’s trailer would devolve into an I Think You Should Leave sketch, despite knowing full well that it’s a trailer for a movie and not an upcoming Netflix series? I can’t tell if I feel more disturbed when his character Craig is smiling, or when he looks upset.

The basic logline of this story, which was also written by director Andrew DeYoung, is that Craig’s relatively quiet existence gets upended after Brian shows up and adds a new spark to life that may seem exciting at first, but soon unravels and spirals out of control. And it might have come across as a truly harrowing tale if not for incredibly funny co-stars like Jon Glaser, Josh Segarra and Jack Dylan Grazer. Kate Mara doesn't hurt, either.

The trailer is made all the more effective by the blurbs that pop up throughout, which totally sell the movie as being both over-the-top hilarious and incredibly unnerving. I think if you put both of those elements into a jar and shake it up real good, it makes a temporary Tim Robinson appear.

Time will tell if Friendship ends up being one of A24’s best movies, or if it’ll be the thing that keeps me awake and afraid of making new friends for the rest of my life. It can only be one or the other.

Following an accolade-heavy premiere at TIFF in 2024, Friendship is next set to arrive at SXSW in March, and will hit theaters later this year.