What you should be doing is hooking into the check for 'permissions_check:comment'

http://reference.elgg.org/ElggEntity_8php_source.html#l00972

eg.

function myplugin_can_comment_hook($hook, $type, $return, $params) {

    $entity = $params['entity'];

    $user = $params['user'];

    // check if the user is the owner, or a friend of the owner, return true if the can comment, return false if they can't, return $return to stick with the default

}

Ahhhh thank you so much.  I didn't really know what a hook was for.  Been messing around with elgg for a little bit, but never got too deep into it.  Thank you.  So I'll change the forms.php file back to how it was originally, and then try modifying the hook.  Thanks so much!