The Friend (2025)

[BluBonnet]

I love dog movies!!

‘The Friend’ Review: Naomi Watts Inherits a Handful in a Dog Movie That’s Really About Accepting Mortality

Before his death, French actor Alain Delon had said that he wished for his dog, Loubo, to be put down when he passed. Delon believed the bond between him and his rescued Belgian Malinois was so strong that the dog would miss him dearly when he died and preferred to spare his pet such pain. (In the end, Delon’s children assured the press that Loubo would be spared.)

How does one explain death to a dog? That question, and several others deeper than we might expect from a “dog movie,” give intellectual heft to “The Friend,” a gentle coping-with-grief drama that provides its audience with a 180-pound emotional support animal in the form of Apollo, a harlequin Great Dane who’s missing his master and headed for the proverbial glue factory unless a bighearted enough human agrees to adopt him. Naomi Watts plays that human in a by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser with a bit more on its mind than your typical canine-centric tearjerker.

It’s plenty tough to explain death to people, most of whom prefer not to think about it — an unfortunate situation with many pet owners, who don’t adequately plan for what will become of their companions when they die. That’s not the case with Walter Meredith (Bill Murray), a widely admired old-school author — the sort who dallied with his students back in the day, before times changed and charges of misconduct cut short his teaching career — who bequeaths the moose-sized pooch to his favorite mentee/onetime fling, Iris (Watts).

For co-directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee, landing Murray for what amounts to an extended cameo was quite the coup: The role demands an actor whose presence is felt even when he’s off-screen, and whose charms might spare such a problematic character. Personally, I had a hard time keeping Walter’s exes straight, as this serial womanizer’s funeral is attended by his first, second and third wives — Elaine (Carla Gugino), Tuesday (Constance Wu) and Barbara (Noma Dumezweni), respectively — as well as an adult daughter, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), and several friends, of which Iris is presumably one.