Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012) Directed by Lorene Scafaria. Starring: Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley. IMDB says: “As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.”
Seeking a Friend follows a man named Dodge who doesn’t really have much going for him even with the world’s 3 week countdown to destruction via huge meteor. His wife bails, he has no kids or other family, and his friends aren’t really that comforting either (think of Carrell’s other roles in Crazy Stupid Love or Dan in Real Life and you’ll have a good idea of his characterization). He finally meets his upstairs neighbor Penny (Knightley in a modern setting for once) just in time to escape city riots and go on a last minute trip to find Dodge’s high school sweetheart and get Penny back to her family in Surrey.
Of course, there are plenty of interesting scenarios and characters that pop up along their journey that make pretty great use of a concept that’s fairly limitless. It’s the end of the world, and people are doing whatever they want–whatever will make them happy in the most short term way and it’s interesting to see how people deal with knowing their expiration date. Dodge and Penny make the best of it by forging an unlikely connection made possible by this situation, finding comfort with each other despite spending most of their lives unsatisfied.
It turns into an incredibly sweet film with amusing humor ranging from absurd to dark. There’s a lot to enjoy–the leads are pleasant to watch together despite seeming mismatched, the concept is fairly fresh, and the soundtrack was surprisingly fantastic. That actually shouldn’t have been a huge shock considering the writer and director Lorene Scafaria also wrote Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, another movie that relied heavily on a good soundtrack. Scafaria does a decent job on her directorial debut, but the script could have used some improvement towards the end where scenes don’t stick quite as well as the beginning of the film.
Throughout a number of stars (Rob Corddry, Rob Huebel, Patton Oswalt, Adam Brody, Gillian Jacobs, and Jim O’Heir for starters) pop up for near-cameo roles, some with barely enough time to make an impression. The movie is from start to finish following Dodge, never straying to scenes taking place elsewhere, so supporting characters only get the chance to be on screen when he is with them. It can make it feel a little packed with recognizable actors in under-utilized roles, but I decidedly liked the fixation on Dodge by the ending which finished the movie perfectly, minimizing much of the prior clunkiness.
Immediately after the film I was reminded of one of my personal semi-recent favorites, Stranger than Fiction. The whole imminent death combined with the questionable couple pairing, not to mention the leads not being that far off from each other, certainly doesn’t make it a stretch. Seeking a Friend doesn’t rank as high as that movie for me, mostly for the few issues with the script and Carrell and Knightley not being completely convincing together, but overall it produced many of the same warm fuzzies. This probably won’t be your favorite movie of the year but it’s inoffensive at worst and pleasantly charming at best.
Seeking A Friend at the End of the World has to be one of the most endearing and charming movies I’ve seen this year. With a great blend of comedy, smart dialogue, wonderful acting, and a very original idea, it is a must see.
The first thing I really enjoyed about the movie was its concept, I have never seen the idea of The Apocalypse approached in such a way, it was actually based in reality. The movie could have easily made the idea of impending doom very campy, but that would have lost the heart of the film. Instead of going to extremes, A Friend plays it with the right amount of real and surreal to make the characters believable and hilarious. The audience is forced to place themselves in the situation but is still able to separate themselves from the characters antics, thusly finding the humor in it.
The casting and acting for A Friend was pitch perfect for me. Steve Carrell, not being a stranger to serio-comedies, played his part perfectly as a man who’s wife leaves him when they find out the world is ending. Keira Knightley is full of quirky charm as Penny, Carrell’s character’s neighbor. Even the smaller roles were done very well by its actors, you can find Rob Cordry and Patton Oswalt lending their talents. But even though the Carrell and Knightley performed well in their roles, the romance between them fell a little flat for me; and it’s not through any fault of their own, it had more to do with their ages than anything else.
A Friend at the End of the World is a great film if you’re in the mood for something off the beaten track of standard Summer cinema. It’s a gem. Oh, and can I just say that I am in LOVE with this movie’s soundtrack? I just did.
