Buddy road trip turns heartfelt in drawn-out film

Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) are neighbors, but they’re more like platonic life partners. They make pizza, watch kung fu movies and play a made-up game with rackets, balls and a barrel called Paddleton.

It’s an easy, mundane and emotionally stunted existence made comfortable with companionship.

Male friendship is often explored in cinema, but Alex Lehmann’s second feature, “Paddleton,” which he co-wrote with Duplass, is unlike any other film of that nature, inspecting the softer, gentler elements of the unique dynamic between the two men.

The boundaries of the bond are tested with Michael’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, throwing their relationship off its axis.

Michael decides he’s going to end things on his own terms rather than pursue medical treatment, and he enlists the person closest to him, Andy, to help him make that happen. That means asking him to assist in his medically prescribed suicide.

It’s as if Andy and Michael don’t get to living until Michael starts dying. In search of a pharmacy that might fill his prescription, the pair hit the road, landing in the kitschy, Danishinspired central California town of Solvang.

Ripped from their routine, the stakes as high as possible with Michael’s life — and death — on the line, the friends confront the nature of their relationship.

But the film, available today on Netflix, never veers into “The Bucket List” territory, instead focusing on the relationship between the two men and the stark realities of the grim task at hand.

While “Paddleton” takes its time meandering, circling and riffing, when the movie arrives at its intensely emotional destination, one can’t help but be struck by the beauty in the simple depiction of two men caring for each other in a time of great need.

Lehman has chosen an aesthetic for his film that is as bleak as Michael’s outlook. Cinematographer Nathan M. Miller shoots the film with natural lighting on real locations, creating a naturalism that somehow defies realism, denying any organic beauty with a pervasive grayish brown pall. Everything seems to have been shot at dusk, but magic hour this isn’t. It looks like dishwater, and that’s not exactly captivating.

But despite the depressing style, the film is a true showcase for Romano’s performance, which is as subtle, sensitive, soulful — and as devastating — as it gets. Andy is required to mourn his friend before he’s gone, then shepherd him through this final transition. He is earnest, emotional and vulnerable in ways Duplass is not always required to be.

But while the film proves the opportunity for Romano to demonstrate his range, it’s not much more than that. We get little sense of who the men are individually — it’s about who they are together in this moment in time, dealing with the ugly realities and the hard choices of life before death. It’s amusing but not a comedy, never losing its heart to irony or sarcasm.

While “Paddleton” takes its time to get there, it ultimately reaches a deeply poignant conclusion. If you’re patient enough, that alone could be worth the trip.