The first feature starring I Think You Should Leave’s auteur of awkwardness is now 2025’s highest-grossing limited release. Yes, we’re sure about that.
For many years, it was easy to take Tim Robinson for granted. Lorne Michaels, Comedy Central executives, the majority of the American public throughout the 2010s—we all allowed his genius to go unrecognized, even as Robinson was around, working, and building a small but loyal following among alt-sketch comedy nerds. That all changed starting in 2019, with the first season of his Netflix virality machine I Think You Should Leave, which placed Robinson in rarefied air—with perhaps only Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edibiri as his peers—as the most singular comedic star to emerge this decade.
This weekend, writer/director Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship—starring Robinson as a suburban dad fixated on his suave new neighbor (Paul Rudd)—expanded from 6 screens to 60, pulled in $1.4 million at the box office, and became the year’s top-grossing limited release. In classic Robinson fashion, the movie is a weird, fucked-up, anti-pop object, but it may go down in history as the project that helped Robinson complete his impossible-to-see-coming ascent to mainstream-comedy stardom, in a moment when the idea of a mainstream American comedy star has never been more imperiled.
