Stream It Or Skip It?

Intimate character dramas-slash-actor’s showcases like The Friend (now streaming on Paramount+) are increasingly rare and, yes, we flim crickets have been chirping about that for a while now. What can I say? We get more excited by the prospect of Naomi Watts contemplating the fate of a giant dog than by the umpteenth iteration of an apocalypse squashed by extra-special human beings. Nothing but normal things in this sweet, thoughtful dramedy from The Deep End and Montana Story writing-directing partners David Siegel and Scott McGehee, who explore the complexities of life and death through the lens of human-pet relationships – and if it’s not a particularly revelatory film, it’s a warm and thoughtful musing about what it means to love a dog, among other things. 

THE FRIEND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s not unusual for a dog to perk up at the sound of its owner’s voice. Thing is, the voice is- y’know, this doesn’t feel right. “It” is a cold way to put it. The dog is Apollo, a majestic Great Dane with shotgun blasts of Dalmation spots, mismatched eyes and a sensitive soul. He’s definitely a “he.” And he has no “owner” but rather something else, something that eludes easy definition. Apollo has a friend, a partner, a person to provide his basic dog needs within a human society, and what they have together is best summed up in a vague notion of a word: Love. And here I must sadly shift to past tense: Had. Apollo’s person, Walter (Bill Murray) is dead. Apollo is now in the care of Iris (Naomi Watts), who’s overwhelmed with the loss of her best friend, and the gain of this 150-lb. majestic beast. Much to Iris’ exasperation, Apollo has claimed her bed, and is not easily budged. Iris and Walter’s daughter Val (Sarah Pidgeon) pour through his emails, hoping to publish the correspondence of a celebrated, now-late writer. Val reads Walter’s words aloud and Apollo finally lifts his head, arises, pads into the room and listens. A writer’s voice isn’t just the sound that emerges from their throat – it’s the words from their heart.

How do you explain this? You don’t. The workings of animals’ minds remains a mystery to science. That’s what I mean by vague notions of love, when it exists between two beings that can’t communicate clearly with each other. Alas, this is when the beautiful mystery between dogs and humans begets the pragmatism of Iris’ story. Walter found Apollo abandoned in the middle of New York City, which reads like myth, almost as ridiculous as adopting an elephant seal that emerged from your neighbor’s backyard pond. Iris takes responsibility of the dog in a manner far more crashing-to-earth – Walter’s suicide. And now the Now What of the aftermath is on the duvet, needing walkies, baths and nums, and likely getting Iris evicted from her rent-controlled apartment. Do dogs mourn? In real life or in movies? I dunno, and a veterinarian would likely have a squishy answer that’s not quite satisfying. But yes, Apollo is in mourning.

So is Iris. She’s an academic, a writing instructor, a writer. She was Walter’s student, briefly his lover, then his closest friend. He had a lot of brief lovers. He leaves behind a few ex-wives, many more girlfriends and an ugly end to his career, summed up ambiguously as “that misconduct nonsense.” (Note: It may not be nonsense.) Iris has a long-gestating writing project that Walter encouraged, a pile of whatnot in a box labeled “Eastern Bloc.” It’s just writer’s block now, though. It’s certainly apt that Apollo takes out his separation anxiety on all her research – she comes home one day to find her books and papers scattered and damp and chewed upon. She turns her research to dog rescues that might take an aging Dane, because a loner with a career and a giant creature and a modest apartment with an angry super is a bit much, but it’s a bit more than that when you put pain and grief and anger and sorrow and other miscellaneous and sundry unprocessed emotions on top of the misery sundae. Unfinished business looms large in Iris’ life. I mean, what the hell is she going to do with this giant literary symbol sulking quiet and sad-eyed on her bed?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Not Marmaduke, in any of its iterations. Thankfully. No, consider The Friend a little farther down the evolutionary line from Marley and Me, with hints of Wonder Boys’ story of midlife struggles and the performance Murray gave in the underrated drama On the Rocks. 

Performance Worth Watching: Is it any surprise that Watts is terrifically skilled at being the rock-solid hub of a finely cast dramedy rounded out by the likes of Pidgeon, Noma Dumazweni, Constance Wu, Carla Gugino and Ann Dowd? Nope. Not at all.

Memorable Dialogue: The vet’s advice to Iris: “He’s a good dog. Don’t turn him into a bad one.”

Sex and Skin: None. 

Our Take: “How do you explain death to a dog?” asks a character early in The Friend, and my reaction was, how do you explain it to a human? You fudge around intellectually and emotionally and spiritually and if you’ve been around the sun a few dozen times you sigh and realize death is just a necessary omnipresence you have to learn to live with. Science tells us dogs have similar hormones and brain structures to humans, and therefore experience limited emotions, but do they have what it takes to grieve? What is grieving, anyway? A biological response that helps us process loss or trauma? That seems reasonable, I think. 

I’m admittedly spitballing here, nothing more. But so is The Friend, in suggesting a few modestly profound parallels between human and canine experiences. Although McGehee and Siegel tend to lean on tidy literary flourishes in a quest to explore the messier corners of the human psyche, it never feels overly phony. In fact, once it gets past the silly bit where Iris can’t get Apollo on her elevator and they therefore must climb many flights of stairs to her apartment, the film becomes a rich and complex story about a gaggle of women left in the wake of one man’s oversized life. We’re left to piece together Walter as a lovable shitshow of a quasi-gentleman – played perfectly in a few flashbacks by Murray in wise-old-cad mode – who perhaps found greater companionship in a very large dog than anyone else he ever met. Somewhere in its subtext is the question as to where uber-masculinity and sensitivity cross paths, although the screenplay seems hesitant to plumb the darker corners of the psychology of suicidal ideation. 

Smartly, the story hones in on Iris’ need to escape Walter’s shadow; I interpret the why-her of the dog-centric portion of the plot to be his understanding that truth, and that Apollo might just lead her out of it, toward wherever it is she needs to go. She’s been stuck for a while – never forget that writer’s block is a hammer-slams-on-nail literary symbol that writers love to put in their novels and films – and there’s nothing like getting your shoulder nearly yanked from your socket by a beast on a leash to force you in a direction you hadn’t previously considered. So Apollo exists as an obvious catalyst for Iris to process her grief and acknowledge the existence of some hard-to-define emotions, and her journey is stressful and contemplative for her, and warm, insightful and earnest for us observers. And while the first two acts are a touch too comfortingly familiar, the film finishes very strong as Iris consults a shrink (Tom McCarthy in an amusing cameo) and, for lack of a better description, confronts Walter’s ghost, a pair of sequences that keenly balance potent drama and subtle comedy. 

I’m grateful to report that doggy woo-woo – e.g., Apollo howling at Walter’s wake, although he simply might not be keen on bagpipes – is limited to a couple of not-entirely-unwelcome moments, and doggy poo-poo is nowhere to be found. The Friend features nary a single hijink where the huge dog whizzes on things it shouldn’t or destroys furniture by merely sitting on it. No, the film finds greater traction in the gentle immediacy within the relationship we big brains have with our pets, who may not “understand” things like we do, but sure seem to be in the right place at the right time. Whether they’re empathy sponges or just cold and looking to leach a little heat from you doesn’t matter. They’re present, and that’s all that matters. 

Our Call: The Friend is a smart, sweet Movie for Adults. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.