Overall, I didn’t like this movie. It’s hard to criticize a work in which someone dies of cancer (probably that’s why there’s no shortage of such films), but I’ll try. In the script, the figure of a family friend, Dane, who helps couple Matt and Nicole with their two daughters during Nicole's terminal illness, of course, is well highlighted here. His unselfish help, patience and time to the detriment of his own interests is really something new against the background of dozens of similar stories. There are even several episodes in which Dane is shown alone or without his friends, and this helps to better understand him as a person - not just a "pretty", harmless and not yet had time to decide on his life, but a person, as it is customary to say, "a fine mental organization."
But cancer is cancer, and it attracts a lot of attention and drawbacks of directing. Compositionally before us is a collage of everyday scenes ("Year with diagnosis", "Two years before diagnosis", etc.), which in a loose time sequence gradually move to the point of dying. The more inevitable the end becomes, the more the characters of the film, including Nicole, want to include Nicole’s life to the fullest. There are always new desires, and Dane and Matt work hard to fulfill them.
Of course, a dying person wants to drink from the fountain of life, but it seems that Nicole can not single out the main thing in her life, can not sum up any of the way. It turns out that a new hairstyle and writing letters to children for the future are about the same thing, because Nicole wants them the same way. From this "live for life" there is some unpleasant residue - it's like throwing a party on the eve of the end of the world. I think if Dane's image had turned out to be more convex, and not often faded into the background, then the film would have looked very different. And since only by the title of "The Friend" you can understand that Dane should be paid attention.