By Randal C. Hill
This movie, which stars Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, features a scene-stealing newcomer to the silver screen. He weighs 150 pounds and stands 42” tall. His real name is Bing, his movie name is Apollo, and he’s a Great Dane dog.
Wait! Don’t go away! “The Friend” isn’t a kid-oriented yarn like “Old Yeller” or “Benji,” nor is the canine star a brave, heroic creature such as Rin Tin Tin or Lassie. It’s about a dog who misses his master, even though he is also here to help a lonely woman find herself.
“The Friend” opens with rascally ex-college professor Walter (Murray) holding forth at a party and joyously orating (perhaps for the umpteenth time) about how he came to find and adopt Apollo, who was alone in a New York City park when Walter first spied him.
In the next scene, we see many of the same party people—including Walter’s three ex-wives—gathered at his funeral. The professor has died by his own hand, although we never learn why.
Iris (Watts) is a middle-aged writer and creative-writing instructor who has been Walter’s closest friend since the days when she was his student, and he was her instructor-cum-mentor. Since a one-night tryst long ago, their relationship has been both meaningful and platonic.
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It’s a flabbergasted Iris that Walter has bequeathed massive Apollo to. Three problems thus emerge. First, Iris isn’t a “dog person.” Also, she lives in a rent-controlled apartment that doesn’t allow pets. Finally, Apollo is severely depressed—he’s mourning the loss of Walter in his life—and the canine turns to Iris for support.
“The Friend” functions on different levels—as a finely tuned dog movie for grown-ups, as the story of a single woman making do in New York, and, perhaps most importantly, as a tale of what it truly means to care for something.
Taken from the best-selling 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez, the heartfelt script was written and directed by the long-established team of David Siegel and Scott McGhee.
A standing-ovation winner at three 2024 film festivals, “The Friend” from Samuel Goldwyn Production releases in theaters April 4.
