How far would you go for friendship?

The relationships between friends are an integral part of many movies. In Friendship, Nonnas and Another Simple Favor, friends are everything.

“Men shouldn’t have friends” is the tagline for the comedy Friendship, which follows a lonely man named Craig (Tim Robinson) in his attempt to befriend his charismatic neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd).

Kate Mara plays Craig’s often-ignored wife, whose many meaningful friendships are showcased in a pivotal party scene to contrast how bizarre and alone Craig is. Mara told Yahoo Entertainment that the movie feels so funny because its absurdity is strangely accurate, especially in its portrayal of male friendship.

“My relationships with my girlfriends are so honest and we talk about our feelings all the time,” she said. “With men, conversations are much shorter and less emotional. … I think some of that is probably beneficial! Men move on very quickly from quarrels.”

All that Craig’s male acquaintances seem to want to talk about is “the new Marvel” movie, which he hasn’t seen yet, so he goes all in on Austin, who takes him to explore underground tunnels and introduces him to his ancient tool collection. Craig pays $100 to lick a toad in the back room of a cellphone store to investigate Austin’s interest in ayahuasca. Ultimately, Craig’s investment in furthering their bond threatens to ruin both of their lives.

Men weren’t laughing as much as women at the screening of Friendship that Geoffrey Greif attended, he told Yahoo Entertainment. Greif is a social work professor at the University of Maryland who has written widely about male friendship. He described it as “cringey,” but also felt that it accurately portrayed how “men have shoulder-to-shoulder friendships and women have face-to-face friendships.”

“Men get together and do things facing out, while women feel more comfortable sitting down and talking and looking at each other while they do this,” he explained.

Friendship takes that to the extreme, but Greif said that “extremes often get at what’s going on.”

“Men do not feel comfortable pursuing other men for friendships. … They don’t like for other men to come across as too needy,” he continued. “Whether or not it will have universal appeal to all men, I doubt it. But if you move the needle 5 or 10% for men who see the movie and say, ‘You know what, this helps me understand my friendships a little better.’ … I think that can have a benefit.”

Another recent film, Nonnas, shows men going to extremes for friendship, though it has a much more lighthearted tone. The movie centers around a man named Joe (Vince Vaughn) who hires real-life Italian grandmothers to make home-cooked meals at his restaurant.

His relationship with his best friend, Bruno (Joe Manganiello), is central to the success of his business venture, though he struggles to express that at times.

“Men are terrible communicators, especially Italian men who have machismo. They have to kind of battle against that, but I think Italians have great capacity to have heart,” Manganiello told Yahoo Entertainment. “They've got to kind of like wear themselves out before they get to the heart.”

Bruno and Joe are longtime pals, and they see each other constantly, but they rarely go deep on their feelings. That makes it hard for them to reconcile after they fight.

“They don’t even know how to look at each other,” Nonnas director Stephen Chbosky told Yahoo Entertainment. “Just being a guy from Pittsburgh, it was very easy for me to relate to.”

Though they struggle to communicate fully, their love for one another transcends their social conditioning. At the end of the movie, Bruno makes a major sacrifice for Joe to be able to keep the restaurant in business. Nonnas screenwriter Liz Maccie told Yahoo Entertainment that she wanted to show “how good we can really be to each other.”

Vaughn is something of an expert on male friendship, given how many buddy comedies, including Swingers and Wedding Crashers, he’s starred in, .

“A good friend is loyal. … You can trust a friend,” he told Yahoo Entertainment. “But a real friend will also let you be who you are. They’re not trying to make you fit into your life. They’ll accept you for whatever you are.”

Nonnas aims to break the stigma that male friendships face onscreen and off.

Sekoul Krastev, a decision scientist, told Yahoo Entertainment that the intimacy gap in male friendship “isn’t innate, it’s learned.”

“Studies show that boys are just as emotionally expressive as girls until around age 6,” he said. “After that, societal norms begin nudging boys toward independence and emotional restraint, leading to adult friendships that are often less verbally intimate.”

Media portrayals can reflect and reinforce these friendship norms, he explained, “sometimes encouraging closeness, and other times stigmatizing it.”

The extremes of female friendship

In contrast with the male friendship movies of the moment, Another Simple Favor goes all in on exposing the many bizarre, unspoken rules of female friendship — especially between moms.

In the original movie A Simple Favor, Anna Kendrick plays a mommy blogger named Stephanie who offers to help Emily (Blake Lively), the fabulous parent of her son’s friend, with a basic task. It spirals out of control and Stephanie ends up putting Emily behind bars.

That’s why it’s so bizarre when, in the sequel, Emily shows up at Stephanie’s book signing to ask her to be her maid of honor at her destination wedding. Stephanie agrees, saying it’ll be great content for her fans, but it’s clear that she also feels an emotional bond with Emily that makes her willing to go to great lengths — in this case, a possibly mob-affiliated wedding in Capri — to uncover what’s really going on with her.

Paul Feig, who directed A Simple Favor, Another Simple Favor and other seminal works about female friendship like Bridesmaids and The Heat, told Yahoo Entertainment he became fascinated with the concept because he grew up with mostly girls and women as friends, and as an only child, was very close to his mother.

“I just find female friendships to be really wonderful and interesting,” he said. “There’s something fascinating to me about it versus male friendship, which … can be great too, but there’s a 'bro-iness' about that kind of thing that I’m not interested in.”

“I’m such a sensitive person that I think I just enjoy [female] relationships — I find them very fun and funny. The way women bond and interact with each other is really lovely. … It doesn’t tend to be as aggressive as male friendship and bonding can be,” he added.

He’s not the only person who sees the gender divide. As a clinical psychologist and mental health researcher, Ehab Youssef sees how deeply friendship can shape people’s emotional well-being and how differently it plays out for men and women.

“Female friendships tend to be emotionally expressive, built on shared vulnerability and verbal connection, while male friendships often emphasize shared activities and loyalty through action rather than words,” he said. “Neither is better, just shaped by cultural norms and socialization.”

Seeing these dynamics portrayed onscreen — even if they’re taken to extreme lengths — “reflect or challenge what we experience in real life,” he said.

“When films capture the raw honesty, humor or heartbreak of real friendships, especially ones that defy stereotypes, it resonates,” Youssef said. “It helps us feel seen, and sometimes, it even shows us new ways of being with the people we love.”