By George Bate
That Friend is about that friend in your life who makes things more difficult than they need to be, is fairly annoying most of the time, and makes you question why you still engage in them. Unfortunately, That Friend is also a movie that makes you feel exactly how that friend makes you feel.
From filmmaking duo Alex Wall and Will Sterling, That Friend follows Henry (Josh Brener) and Paul (Harvey Guillén), two lifelong friends who have grown apart in recent years. After hitching a ride with Henry and his girlfriend Penny (Billie Lourd) to Palm Springs, Paul crashes the seemingly happy couple’s romantic weekend and soon descends into chaos when Penny and a number of strangers accidentally smoke his drug-laced cigarettes. As Henry tries to keep his relationship with Penny intact and finds himself evaluating the role he wants Paul to play in his life, loyalties are tested and the complexities of having ‘that friend’ are exposed.
That Friend exists in the same subgenre of comedy that the likes of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Hangover, Due Date, and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle do. Like these other (and far better) movies, Wall and Sterling’s indie comedy derives humor from that one annoying friend or companion that, as we discover more about their vulnerabilities and issues, come to understand and even love. The writing is on the wall for the trajectory of That Friend’s story from the get go, and yet it should be commended for, at the last hurdle, subverting expectations in a rather clever way. But, to get to that point, the audience is forced to contend with a comedy that largely misses the mark.
The vast majority of the humor in That Friend can be divided into two categories: 1) humor that comes from Harvey Guillén’s messy, extroverted, and idiosyncratic Paul, and 2) humor that comes from seeing people trip balls on all kinds of substances. The effectiveness of the latter will depend on how much comedic mileage one gets from seeing people stumble, act strange, and make fools out of themselves while on drug-induced trips (for us, not that much). The effectiveness of the former, meanwhile, will depend on how much one resonates with a showy, over-the-top, and purposefully annoying performance from Guillén (again, for us, not that much).
In turn, That Friend leaves little in the way of clever humor to chuckle at and relies more exclusively on the drama underlying its story to compel. In this regard, Wall and Sterling’s film finds greater success as it tells a story that is destined to feel uncomfortably relatable to most. Everyone has had that loud, difficult friend that you can’t seem to get out of your life. Or maybe you’ve been that friend to someone else. Or maybe you’ve been both in your lifetime.
That Friend strikes a nerve in its authentic depiction of adult friendships and how these coincide, and often collide, with romantic relationships. Through Brenner’s character Henry, Wall and Sterling explore the tradeoff between friendship and obligation, codependency and individual growth, and love for someone vs. love of the idea of that someone. As a drama, with a dialled down and more grounded tone, Wall and Sterling’s film may have triumphed in its willingness to explore these often overlooked issues and themes. Instead, however, we’re left to reckon with a film that disappointingly evokes the same eye-rolling loss of patience that ‘that friend’ does.
VERDICT: 5/10
That Friend follows the likes of The Hangover and Planes, Trains and Automobiles in existing as a comedy that derives humor from an annoying friend/companion, who we eventually grow to love and understand. Unfortunately, Alex Wall and Will Sterling’s film misses the mark with its jokes, which overly rely on a showy performance from Harvey Guillén and how much comedic mileage one gets from seeing people on drug-induced trips. More success is found with the film’s dramatic material as Wall and Sterling tell an uncomfortably relatable story about having a friend we can’t seem to get out of our lies. Through Josh Brenner’s character Henry, Wall and Sterling explore the tradeoff between friendship and obligation, codependency and individual growth, and love for someone vs. love of the idea of that someone, all of which would make for far more compelling themes and ideas if they were not bogged down by misfiring jokes. In turn, the audience is left to reckon with a film that makes you feel exactly how ‘that friend’ makes you feel – fatigued, annoyed, and in desperate need of a reprieve from messiness and chaos.