Happy International Friendship Day, one and all! For more than 10 years but fewer than 13, the world has come together every 30th of July to honor the bonds of platonic kinship. There’s no wrong way to celebrate – buy your pal a paddleboard, or shoot them out of a cannon. Shoot them out of a cannon and onto the paddleboard you just bought them. Shout from the highest mountain, “I have friends!” and then call your friends to see if they’ll give you a ride off the top of the highest mountain. The odds are good that they won’t. Friendships don’t usually work that way.
So, here’s a better idea: Why not pull up some sofa and feast your eyes on one of the most enviable friendships in motion picture history? Living vicariously through your favorite movie characters is easier than mountain climbing anyway, plus you won’t get a reputation in your social circle as “the one who keeps asking us to drive up Mount Hood and pick them up.” Hey! Maybe your friends could come and watch one of these movies with you. They’d probably like that option better.
Kirk and Spock, The Wrath of Khan
Yes, it’s basic. It’s the nerd friendship equivalent to a pumpkin spice candle. And no, I’m not sorry. Here’s why:
Enjoying science fiction has always been about picking your shots. On a good day, maybe 40% of a franchise is something you can recommend to your friends without feeling embarrassed. That said, if your best buds can’t get behind the reactor scene in Wrath of Khan, they’re not really your friends. 16 years after the debut of Kirk and Spock, the former finally faces a genuine no-win scenario, while the latter admits he caught feelings. A friend that’ll hemorrhage internally from radiation exposure to keep you safe is a rare thing, but a friend who’ll watch you do it? That’s once in a lifetime. Twice if you’ve got a Genesis Device.
Shaun and Ed, Shaun of the Dead
Everybody’s got a zombie survival plan, even if it’s a rough draft. It’s been stewing in the back of your head since the first time you watched a character in a Romero movie biff it and thought “I could do better than that.” What most people don’t have, however, is a plan for what they’re going to do once everything cools down. Great, you might spend a few months as the Wasteland King of the Lacrosse Aisle at Dick’s Sporting Goods, but who’s going to clean up your lawn once it’s time to go home?
Shaun of the Dead takes that question and molds it into a metaphor for adulthood: The responsibilities you take on, learning that relationships take work, watching your parents die, and seeing old acquaintances disappear into the crowd. Most importantly, it shows how an adult friendship progresses, necessarily, from adolescent shenanigans to mature compartmentalization. Your best friend can’t stay your roommate forever, but you can keep his undead remains in a shed playing Call of Duty. That’s a lesson we can all get behind.
Harry Burns and Sally Albright, When Harry Met Sally
One of the harder truths that we face in life is that friendships, like all things, are impermanent. That doesn’t make them any less worth celebrating. Take Harry Burns and Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally. Their friendship, defined by a shared sense of humor and a mutual willingness to drop everything to take care of one another, was a slice cut out of time. It was a sedimentary layer of platonic affection, wedged between their introduction, when they hated each other, and the movie’s third act, when they ruined everything by getting married.
Also, maybe movie interpretations are subjective.
Frodo and Sam, Lord of the Rings films
Frodo Baggins and Samwise “The Truckinator” Gamgee have spent more than 20 years as the public’s go-to example of comradery through bad times. Maybe you see Sam’s choice to carry Frodo up the side of a volcano as analogous to supporting a friend through depression, hardship, illness, or trauma.
Or, depending on your outlook, you could look at Sam and Frodo as behaviorally identical to those two buddies who stay out too late celebrating a birthday. One of them gets super bummed and starts talking about how pointless everything is. A weird third party invites himself along halfway through the proceedings and won’t put on a shirt. At the end of the night, it’s up to the stronger person to make sure everyone gets where they’re going. “I can’t carry your pain for you, but I can get you an Uber,” they seem to say, and then politely ask the driver to leave the window rolled down.
Either way, every Frodo needs a Samwise.
Shang-Chi and Katy, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings
Phase Four of the MCU has a lot to answer for, but one of the most pleasant surprises was the friendship it introduced between Katy and Shang-Chi back in 2021. You don’t get a ton of male/female friendships in pop culture, especially not ones where the end goal isn’t “they were in love the whole time.” Maybe I’ll wind up eating these words when The Kang Dynasty ends with a white wedding officiated by Lockjaw from Inhumans, but for now, ya done good, Marvel.
Han and Chewie, Star Wars IV-VI, the Holiday Special, and that’s all
The best friendships are, and always have been, based around an ancient pseudo-religious form of culturally mandated indentured servitude. Maybe that’s what makes Han and Chewie’s partnership so enduring for as long as you don’t watch The Force Awakens or Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Molly and Amy, Booksmart
It was 2019. Nobody in America had developed a strong opinion about the Ant-Man movies yet, Don’t Worry, Darling was still a bad dream that Olivia Wilde had on a night when she ate curry and fell asleep watching Black Mirror under too many blankets, and a new standard was set for big screen female friendships thanks to Booksmart.
If you’ve seen Booksmart, you know why Molly and Amy are on this list. If you haven’t seen Booksmart, go watch Booksmart. The central friendship and story in general are pretty remarkable in that they keep improving, right up until the last two syllables of dialogue in the film.
Wyatt and Doc, Tombstone
It’s not easy, being a jerk. More often than not, you wind up on your own, too afraid of your own failings to reach out to others. Paralyzed by your own inadequacy, you ice out more and more of the people in your life. Maybe you get a job as an entertainment writer and deflect from your own shortcomings by taking easy shots at Don’t Worry Darling. Maybe you’ve been drinking.
Unfortunately for Doc Holliday in Tombstone, they didn’t have entertainment news websites back in the 19th century. They just had tuberculosis and a shockingly solid handle on mustache maintenance.
They also had Wyatt Earp, the only guy in the whole movie who smiles when Doc walks into a room. Upon being asked why he’s following Wyatt on his revenge ride, Doc says “Wyatt Earp is my friend.” “I’ve got lots of friends,” his cohort replies. “I don’t,” says Doc. What that movie lacked in historical accuracy, it more than made up for in making you care about a dentist.
Jay and Silent Bob, The Askewniverse
Read the holy texts – more specifically, the words superimposed over the opening shot of 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back – and you’ll be struck by how long Jay and Bob have been hanging out. They met in the ‘70s. They staked their claim outside of the Quick Stop. They built a home for themselves against the wall of a VHS rental establishment and spent the next five decades being borderline inseparable.
And that’s what real friendship is, isn’t it? It’s not about staying close when things are easy. It’s about committing to your life mate through it all. Through the good times and the bad. Through Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. From the early, optimistic days, chronicled with a handheld camera and a boom mic taped to the end of a hockey stick, to Clerks III, a movie so relentlessly onanistic that air marshals are legally required to zip tie Kevin Smith’s hands to his armrests if he tries to watch it on a plane.
Barb and Star, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
You think you’ve got a best friend? Really? What’s the longest that the two of you have talked about a hypothetical storm chaser named Trish and her valiant battle with skin cancer? Less than the length of an entire cross-country flight? You know nothing of friendship.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is a perfect movie in its own right. Seriously, no notes. And what drives it – more than Yoyo or seagulls or the promise that Jamie Dornan might one day be a part of an official couple – is the friendship between its title characters. It’s a friendship that can survive anything, even a lot of mosquitos and a banana boat ride that HR says we’re not allowed to describe here.