There’s a very specific kind of loneliness that comes from wanting to be close to someone who doesn’t want the same thing and that’s exactly the ache Friendship explores. Craig Waterman, played with painful precision by Tim Robinson in his big-screen leading debut, is a man who wants a friend so badly, he forgets how people work. If you’re looking for I Think You Should Leave–style sketch chaos (though some moments get close), you won’t necessarily find that here. Robinson has channeled that same manic need for connection into something that was just sad and awkward to me.

Directed and written by Andrew DeYoung (PEN15, Our Flag Means Death), Friendship is a character study about a man who doesn’t understand the unspoken tiers of friendship, and more importantly, doesn’t know that he doesn’t understand them. Craig fails to recognize any and all social cues, which is equally funny and difficult to watch.

He’s a suburban dad with a dull tech job where he tries to figure out how to get people addicted to things, a teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) who seems more like a polite roommate than family, and a wife (Kate Mara) who’s in remission from cancer and gently trying to push him out of his emotional rut. She encourages him to make friends, and when a misdelivered package leads him to meet new neighbor Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), Craig falls in platonic love.

Austin is everything Craig is not: cool, charismatic, well-liked, and socially fluent. He’s a local weatherman, plays in a diet punk band, collects ancient relics and hosts a regular guys’ night. He charms Craig with a midnight sewer adventure that ends in a naughty rooftop cigarette, the kind of spontaneous, slightly rebellious hang that feels like friendship magic to someone who’s never had it.

Craig is emoji-heart-eyes in human form after this. He wants Austin to be his best friend, and he also kind of wants to be him.

With Austin’s seal of approval, Craig starts to change. The attention from someone so socially excellent gives him a rush of confidence. He becomes more assertive and starts mimicking Austin’s quirks and catchphrases. But it doesn’t quite fit. It’s like watching someone try to squeeze into a shoe that’s two sizes too small.

To make matters worse, everything Craig does is transactional. He treats friendship like a checklist: give a compliment, share a drink, offer support, receive intimacy. He believes sincerity should be enough to earn closeness. But that’s not how relationships work, especially not as adults. You don’t get to fast-track your way into someone’s inner circle just because you really, really want to be there.

It’s also how Craig operates at home. He’s incapable of truly assessing the emotional needs of his wife and son because he’s so fixated on his own. It’s giving solipsistic-core.

His version of connection is often just performance. Doing the “right” thing in hopes of receiving validation or love.

And when those social contracts don’t deliver what he wants, he lashes out. Often in bizarre and deeply uncomfortable ways. He becomes a charmless Adam Sandler character. You see the loneliness, you understand the pain, but that doesn’t make the tantrums any less painful to witness.

There’s a long, squirm-inducing sequence when Craig is finally invited to Austin’s guys’ night, and he implodes in real time. I won’t spoil what happens, partly because it’s a masterclass in secondhand embarrassment, and partly because it’s hard to watch someone be so close to belonging, only to completely sabotage it.

Robinson’s performance is as good as it gets. He weaponizes his physical awkwardness with eerie accuracy. The way he stands, smiles too long, laughs with his whole body and leans in too close becomes its own visual language of discomfort. He plays Craig as a man who wants to be liked so badly, he steamrolls every boundary in his path.

And yet, you feel for him. That’s the film’s strength. Friendship shows you how easy it is to become a person like this when you never learned how to connect, when the rules were never explained, and when you’re too far along in life to have the awareness to know you might be doing it all wrong.

Paul Rudd is perfectly cast as the kind of guy everyone wants to be friends with. His insecure and accommodating Austin is warm and generous, but not a pushover, and the tension between his patience and growing discomfort is one of the film’s best dynamics. Kate Mara delivers the goods as Tami, Craig’s conflicted wife, and Jack Dylan Grazer brings an understated sadness to his role as Craig’s son, an emotionally intelligent teen who has learned how to tiptoe around his own father’s emotional volatility.

Friendship is funny in that sharp, inhale-through-your-teeth kind of way—but it’s also one of those movies where the line between comedy and discomfort gets blurry. There were moments in the theater when I thought I was watching a serious, even painful scene, and the audience burst out laughing. It’s the kind of film where you’re never quite sure whether you’re supposed to cringe, laugh or both, and that’s very much the point.

The film is a painfully recognizable portrait of someone who’s desperate to be let in, but never notices the sign that says, “By invitation only.”