That Friend Tribeca Review: An Exhausting Millennial Misfire

Sometimes the most entertaining part about watching a bad festival film is trying to figure out how on earth it ever got made in the first place. When you sit through an experience as genuinely aggravating as That Friend, you have to assume some rich producer was doing a massive favor for a buddy. It feels like the entire production is held together by a series of favors from B-tier celebrities financing their untalented friends’ Hollywood dreams. It’s an annoying, completely out-of-touch, and cloying endurance test, saddled with a script so exceptionally weak that it borders on offensive to the audience.

That Friend Tribeca Review

Josh Brener, Harvey Guillén, and Billie Lourd in That Friend, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 8, 2026.

The title is supposed to be a clever summation of the premise. Directed by Alex Wall and Will Sterling, That Friend operates on the core idea that we all have that one buddy who is awkward, cares way too much, and is chronically cheerful to the point of utter exhaustion. The glaring problem with this setup is that if you look back on your life and think you actually have a friend like that, you’re probably the asshole in the relationship. That staggering lack of self-awareness bleeds into every single frame of this exhausting millennial comedy, making it an absolute chore to sit through.

The plot follows a couple as they attempt to take a romantic trip to Palm Springs. Josh Brener plays Henry, supposedly our relatable protagonist, alongside his girlfriend, Penny, played by Billie Lourd. Their peaceful desert getaway is interrupted when Paul, played by Harvey Guillén, intrudes on their lives. Paul is armed with a pack of laced cigarettes and a bizarre penchant for taking things far past the point of comfort. The narrative expects us to view this dynamic as a hilarious, mismatched clash of personalities. However, you can hardly even call these people friends because their relationship is so wildly unbalanced and toxic.

The central, fatal flaw of the movie is that Henry is quite easily one of the least likable characters to appear on screen in recent memory. He’s an unbridled, pretentious jerk. He carries a smug, obvious, antagonistic aura that’s staggering to watch. Throughout the runtime, we watch Henry miserly observe Paul, pouting and complaining in the corner while Paul drags people around and acts ridiculously. You keep waiting for the script to call Henry out as the actual villain of the story, but that moment of clarity never comes.

This creative decision makes even less sense because Paul isn’t exactly much more likable as a character, but he’s certainly not the absolute monster Henry makes him out to be. Guillén plays him as an annoying man-child. He’s an affable moron at worst. Yet, That Friend relentlessly takes Henry’s side. It presents Paul’s boisterous antics as some unforgivable sin while completely ignoring Henry’s toxic superiority complex. It’s a completely baffling narrative choice to center your film on a bunch of miserable jerks and then demand that the audience root for the most cynical and mean-spirited of them all.

A comedy about terrible people can work if it has sharp writing to back it up, but the humor here is a total disaster. There are far too many desperate attempts at jokes, and absolutely none of them land. Every single gag is the most obvious one you could think of. The directors rely heavily on tired stoner movie tropes and obnoxious screaming to fill the dead silence. It lacks any shred of earnestness that could have grounded the story and made these people bearable. Instead, it’s just an 87-minute parade of unlikable people yelling at each other in the desert heat.

Is That Friend worth watching?

That Friend is bad from top to bottom. It has no decent moral lesson, zero redeeming character arcs, and offers absolutely zero laughs. The film elicits nothing but a ton of frustration as you sit there and wait for the credits to roll. It winds up being an eye-rolling experience that leaves you wishing you had skipped the screening altogether and gone to watch literally anything else. It’s a prime example of a festival misfire that fundamentally mistakes loud, obnoxious behavior for actual comedy.

That Friend premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from June 3 – 14, 2026.

That Friend Tribeca Review: An Exhausting Millennial Misfire