A poignantly affecting watch that mostly earns its emotional payoff, delivering gentle laughs along the way. It’ll have them howling in the aisles at the next dog-friendly screening.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 26, 2025

The film carries itself like a bright and mischievous character study in the style of Nicole Holofcener, but is ultimately just a dog weepie with airs.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 25, 2025

It’s a little stiff, a little too earnest and tasteful, that bit too conscious of its own pedigree poise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 25, 2025

This melancholy comedy starring Naomi Watts, about a woman who inherits a Great Dane following a friend's suicide, is a heart-wrenching meditation on grief.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2025

Even if you’re not into the ‘non-action’ genre, the film’s worth it for the dog. There is a dog by the way, did I say?

| Apr 24, 2025

Bing could hardly be more charming as the dog whose presence causes her to confront what’s missing in her own life. How does the closing number go? “A wondrous toy just made for a girl and boy”. I’ll buy that.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2025

A love letter to the canine community. Also, one of the warmest depictions of New York in recent memory.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 15, 2025

This dog can act!

| Apr 9, 2025

Watts finds another rich vein of emotion to dramatize with delicacy, humor and intelligent vulnerability.

| Apr 7, 2025

I don’t know if one can rightly call Apollo’s performance a performance. But whatever it is, it’s heartfelt.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 7, 2025

“The Friend” is a very New York movie, with its brownstone-lined streets and bookish apartments and literary professions, but its message is a universal one: Grief is a profound journey, better experienced with a friend at one’s side.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 4, 2025

It’s an example of my favorite genre—Manhattan intellectuals in life and love, dressed in lots of wool blends and tweed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 4, 2025

“The Friend” stretches on a bit too long, but it’s done with such care and a kind heart that it’s not hard to give it two hours of your time.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 3, 2025

It’s a lovely drama with light comic touches and many more insights about life, grief, writerly ambition and friendship.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 3, 2025

The directors restrain themselves from drawing too much comedy from the obvious size difference between their two leads.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 3, 2025

“The Friend” is a better dog movie than it is a people movie, but it’s such a wonderful dog movie that you may not mind that the people are merely fine.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 3, 2025

The Friend is all soft edges.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 3, 2025

It's rich and emotionally complex, and it's insightful about the relationships in our lives, both of the human and dog variety.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 3, 2025

The film does a wonderful job of exploring the friendship between Iris and Walter.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 3, 2025

The work Watts and Murray do [...] is both emotionally raw and acutely thoughtful, rife with specificity. It’s career-high stuff.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 28, 2025