Movie Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is the ...

Location

Wide Release

Dates

Opens June 22

What if an asteroid were on a collision course with Earth and only 21 days remained before the end of days? What would you do? Reunite with family and spend your final hours letting everyone you care about know how much you love them? Or gorge on all your favorite foods, sleep with anybody who would have you, and try illicit drugs like heroin, because why the hell not?

Seeking a Friend For the End of the World is about an insurance agent named Dodge (Steve Carell) who long ago surrendered himself to the comfort and security afforded by the monotony of an ordinary existence. He?s not equipped to face exciting new opportunities, let alone the apocalypse. So he keeps driving in to work, even as his office is emptier each day.

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria mines some solid comedy from this material. Hers is not a realistic portrayal of the end times. With only 21 days left for mankind, Dodge?s company announces that employees should feel free to wear ?casual Friday? clothes any day of the week. Dodge?s cleaning lady keeps coming to his apartment; when he tells her it?s no longer necessary, she thinks she?s being fired. These moments are exaggerated for comic effect, to be sure, but there?s a kernel of truth there. Faced with tragedy, some of us cling even tighter to our routines.

Others, like Dodge?s friends Warren (Rob Corddry) and Diane (Connie Britton) feel like it?s time to party. They throw a ?last supper? that involves plentiful sexual opportunities, rampant drug use, and guests playing with fire. Dodge attends but doesn?t participate in the debauchery. Instead, since there is no future, he turns to his past. He rummages through a box full of mementos of Olivia, his high school sweetheart, the ?one that got away.?

But suddenly Penny (Keira Knightley) enters his life. She?s younger, vivacious, and?more optimistic than he is. She encourages him to track down Olivia before they?re out of time, and he says he knows someone with a plane who can get her home to England to see her parents (by this point all commercial airlines have shut down.) Seeking a Friend then morphs into a road trip movie, and later a surprisingly ardent romance.

The comic scenes are broad, playing like full-on farce ? as when Penny and Dodge stop to eat at a roadside steakhouse where the entire staff is high on ecstasy. Meanwhile the romantic scenes, as the couple?s relationship develops, have a surprisingly sincere and serious-minded tone. These two aspects of the film don?t entirely mesh together ? they even undermine each other ? which left me unconvinced and unmoved by the romance.

This becomes a bit of a problem because at the end of the day, of course, it?s all about love.

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