PADDLETON: Swims Against The Tide Of Onscreen Male Friendship

Films about serious illness have a tightrope to walk, to find the right balance for their audience and to respect their subject matter. In Hollywood, they were responsible for some of the silver screen’s biggest weepies such as Love Story (1970) and Terms of Endearment (1983). And in recent years, they have been used as part of the narrative for a string of young adult romances, such as A Walk to Remember (2002), Restless (2011), and The Fault in our Stars (2014).

But away from the romantic drama genre, some modern films have also tackled stories with serious or terminal illnesses in different and creative ways. A Monster Calls (2016) blended fantasy and realism to tell the story of a twelve-year-old boy coming to terms with his mother’s terminal cancer. 2015’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl combined teenage angst, comedy-drama, and a lot of film/pop culture references in its story about a movie-obsessed student and his relationship with the eponymous dying girl of the title. And in 50/50 (2011), writer Will Reiser drew from his own experience of cancer for his widely praised screenplay, which found humour in his diagnosis, showing that often trying to find light within a dark situation makes it somehow a little more bearable.

Sharing a form of kindred DNA with 50/50 is the new Netflix film Paddleton, a moving, nuanced take on the bromance, whose edges are littered with lighter moments to balance its serious story.

Everybody needs good neighbours

Paddleton begins in a hospital with two men Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) receiving news of Michael’s tests and that he will need to see a specialist. As Andy tries to create a game to find out how serious Michael’s tests look, the somewhat perplexed nurse asks the men what their relationship is to each other. They reply that they are neighbours, but the following montage of scenes establish that they have formed a deeper friendship beyond simply living in the same block of apartments.

We learn that they spend the majority of their time together – making pizzas, watching beloved kung-fu movies, and playing a game called Paddleton that they have created. It is clear that they have become intrinsic to each other’s lives, passing each other every morning on their way to work, spending most evenings together, and seemingly having little interaction with anyone else. Andy himself confesses that he hates small talk and within his work office environment seems incapable of having a passing conversation with a female colleague.

When Michael receives the diagnosis from his specialist that he has terminal cancer, at first he seems unable to tell Andy; they continue their normal routine until Michael can bring himself to tell his friend the devastating news. Michael makes the decision that he doesn’t want to spend his remaining time in a hospital getting worse, and instead wants to commit medically assisted suicide, a choice that is offered to those with his level of incurable cancer.

He asks Andy if he will help him die and the two then set out on a six-hour road trip to the nearest pharmacy that will fulfill his prescription. But whilst Andy has agreed to assist Michael at the end, it becomes clear as time goes on that he’s unable to comprehend his life without Michael and begins tactics to keep the lethal medication away from his reach.

Everybody needs good friends

Co-written by Duplass alongside director Alex Lehmann, Paddleton may sound like a tough watch, a film about terminal illness and assisted suicide, but it is full of warmth, compassion, and comical observations. Duplass cites it as a response to how bromances are usually portrayed on-screen, how they are always seen as a joke if men are intimate on camera together in a platonic way. He said that he wanted to explore a truly intimate male friendship and show how special these two characters are to each other.

In Paddleton he has certainly achieved this; the bond between Michael and Ray is believably familiar, relaxed and close, their personalities and humour intertwined. They are two people who from the outside world would be considered losers, in a state of arrested development, but who have found their place in the world with each other, their microcosm of quirks and shared interests flourish in each other’s presence. It is this that then makes Michael’s deteriorating condition more affecting. As a viewer you have been just enjoying the comfortableness of their company, that when the shifts begin, they hit you hard, the film creeping up on you to deliver an emotional wallop. A shot of the discarded ball they used to play Paddleton with, lying in the overgrown grass, becomes loaded with meaning and sadness.

Everybody will love Romano

The two leads play their parts impeccably and clearly have a lot of love for each other off-screen as well as onscreen, which radiates in the ease of their friendship and which makes you invest in it too. Mark Duplass, during his career, has played a number of oddball characters that have veered from lovable goof (Safety Not Guaranteed) to charming psychopath (Creep), and he is quietly affecting as Michael, a man who has found solace in a simple life.

Towards the end of the film Michael confesses to Andy that he was once married, that he thought it was the life he wanted, then that he thought he wanted to be alone but when he met Andy he realised that was where he was supposed to be. It is a tender moment and brings home the enormity of the situation as the two men empty Michael’s pills in his final hours.

Ray Romano, meanwhile, continues to move away from his sitcom roots and builds upon his previous performance in The Big Sick (2017), one that Duplass was a big fan of and which made him hunt Romano down at the film’s afterparty to approach him for Paddleton. Duplass said that he noticed a pivot in Romano’s career towards material like Paddleton and wanted him to work on this and, showing himself to be a generous writer, gives Romano the more complex and scene-grabbing role.

Romano infuses Andy with an almost childlike outlook on life (one of his genie wishes is the ability to have sand magically removed from him), and a reluctance to interact with others (despite his apparent desire towards a motel owner, he rebuffs her advances). But his unwavering commitment to his friend makes him an endearing and lovable character, and despite his tendencies to bring humour into awkward circumstances, it is evident that Michael’s condition is hitting him harder than he could have imagined.

In one scene, the pair argue over Michael’s medication, about who should be in possession when Michael shouts ‘I’m the dying guy’ to apparently trump his friend. But Andy retorts ‘I’m the other guy’ which highlights that how, understandably, our thoughts tend to focus on the person suffering but also how it affects those who are trying to ready themselves for the loss.

Paddleton: Conclusion

As a cinema lover, I am a big advocate of seeing films as they were intended, on a big screen. However, with the push and pull at the multiplexes, smaller films without a giant marketing thrust often struggle to land their audience. And although there are always, thankfully, exceptions to these rules, Paddleton’s themes, on the surface, may initially detract people. But on Netflix, the film may find its home and its feet, with viewers more inclined to stumble across it or with good word of mouth travelling in its favour.

It is a film that deserves to find an audience, for whilst it presents familiar narrative arches, it presents a refreshing, beautiful take on male relationships. You may come for the Romano quips, but you will stay for the charming friendship, and crucially the film will stay with you.

How do you feel about films that tackle serious subjects? Will you watch Paddleton?

Paddleton was released on Netflix on 22nd February 2019.