The Friend

Grade: C

I usually wait for a noisy part in a movie to put up the leg rest on my seat, but The Friend is so quiet and solemn, that I was hard-pressed to find an opportunity. Naomi Watts stars as a single writer in New York City who finds herself unwittingly having to care for a Great Dane in her small apartment. Arthur the King is an example of a recent dog movie done very well, but The Friend doesn’t succeed as compelling cinema, with the main plot point or any other irons it has in the fire.

Watts plays Iris, whose longtime friend and fellow writer Walter (Bill Murray) has just died – and for some reason, he left his dog Apollo to her. Walter had a problematic, controversial life, of the #metoo variety, with multiple marriages, affairs, and advances on his students. That alone could have been a meaningful movie, and would have allowed us to have seen more of Murray, but The Friend is mostly about the odd couple of Iris and the canine.

Watts still looks great at 56, and does what she can, but there’s little sense of a journey or progression. When she decides to keep Apollo, and begins taking steps towards allowing him to live in her non-pet-friendly apartment, it feels more like a requirement of the plot rather than her growing to love him. There are many small supporting performances from actors who look like more famous ones. I thought the psychologist was Robert Wuhl for a second. Carla Gugino is in it, though, as Wife #1. Nice to see her again. Sarah Pidgeon, who doesn’t have many credits, is really great as Walter’s daughter, who befriends Iris and helps her out of the writer’s block.

The film does find a way to incorporate more of Bill Murray than you might think, particularly near the end, which is inventive. It doesn’t make the impression it could have, because by that point, I’d grown quite weary of the neverending downtrodden vibe, with the copious amount of voice-over narration. I know this is a movie about writers, but come on.

It seems to end four or five times. They are all the same, with none of them providing new information or driving the point home any better. The fake-out at the end, when it finally does conclude, is shameless and a bit safe. My favorite film review podcast observed that there’s a better, more interesting movie lurking within The Friend, pushed aside as a subplot in favor of focusing on a traditional dog movie. I know what they mean, but going by execution, I wasn’t crazy about either film we were getting.

Grade: C