Based on one of Sigrid Nunez’s lauded novels, The Friend is a meandering ode to friendship, human and canine. When the acclaimed writer and best friend of Iris (played with poise by Naomi Watts) commits suicide, Iris, a blocked solitary writer, has to deal with memories, questions, and the writer’s three wives and his daughter. And she becomes lumbered with the writer’s real best friend, his doleful but magnificent Great Dane (a stellar performance by Bing). The first two thirds of the film unfurls Iris’s gradual embrace of the dog’s faithful friendship, accompanied by wonderful cinematic scenes of woman and monster dog weaving through Manhattan. All well and good, if destined to be sentimental, but then the climax shifts gear into psychoanalytic dreams exploring grief and anger toward the dead writer, followed by a naked polemic for the joy of a dog. Bill Murray, wonderful as the suicide, is accorded too little time, and the other acting performances are realistic but uninspired. Overall, The Friend feels like an ebbing and flowing, reflective novel perhaps best left on the page.
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