The Friend

Naomi Watts plays the ultimate Karen in The Friend, an annoying, would-be uplifting dog-lover dramedy that, along with The Penguin Lessons, continues the weird recent trend of tonally noncommittal animal films about lonely people who blossom when reluctantly paired with a stubborn beast.

Watts’ Iris comes into temporary possession of Apollo the Great Dane after the death of his human and Isis’ professional colleague and literary mentor Walter (Bill Murray, in frustrating autopilot mode), then wastes little time flexing her white privilege across New York City. No Latinx building manager or doorman is safe from her willful ignorance, despite repeated warnings that canines aren't allowed in their buildings. 

Truly, brunch and grocery store violators around the U.S. have nothing on this menace to society. And Watts has nothing on her former acting prowess, struggling to effectively deliver a string of poorly-written monologues by filmmakers Scott McGehee and David Siegel (What Maisie Knew) — adapting Sigrid Nunez’s novel — to her four-legged albatross.

In turn, it's difficult to buy Iris’ emotional connection to Apollo, especially when losing her rent-controlled apartment is the consequence of keeping him. But despite the ultimate workaround to that conflict being one of the most Karen things thinkable, Iris’ behavior has been so infuriating up to that point that anything less selfish and manipulative from this self-pitying jerk would have felt unbelievable.

Bad humans! Very bad humans!

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at Carolina Cinemark, the Fine Arts Theatre, and Regal Bitlmore Grande.

(Photo: Bleecker Street)