Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
(2012)
Comedy/Drama/Romance
1 hr 34 min
Rated: R Language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence
Rating: C+
Director/Writer: Lorene Scafaria (screenplay)
A 70-mile-wide asteroid is en route to Earth, and the last best attempt to counter it has failed. Also failing is the marriage of soft-spoken insurance salesman Dodge; the breaking news that the world will end in an estimated 21 days cues his wife to leave him on the spot.
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| Director Lorene Scafaria |
Dodge is a man who has always played by the rules of life, while his quirky neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) is an extroverted woman who never has. Both initially choose to navigate the impending end of the world with blinders on. Dodge declines joining his friends in increasingly reckless behavior, while Penny fixates on her relationship issues with a self-absorbed musician. Dodge chugs cough syrup and when that is gone he drinks the window cleaner that his housekeeper has asked him to buy for her...he wakes up in the park with a note pinned to his chest that says 'Sorry', written by someone who has left their dog leashed to his foot.
The two misfits meet first when Penny has a rough night and then again when she belatedly delivers Dodge a lost letter, a letter could alter Dodge’s future; it’s from his high-school sweetheart Olivia, the love of his life who is now divorced and has been thinking of him. When a riot breaks out around their apartment building, Dodge realizes that he must seek Olivia out before it’s too late while Penny makes the decision to spend her last days with family in England, but how to get there since all commercial flights have ended. Seizing the moment, Dodge promises to help Penny reach her family if she will provide transport for the two of them in her car immediately. She agrees, and they escape.
These unlikely traveling companions, while on the road together, find their respective personal journeys accelerating and evolving, as their outlooks – if not the world’s – brighten.
PROS
Steve Carell. He creates a sympathetic looser character for whom nothing seems to go his way. Even when he tries to be nice like deciding to be compassionate to a little spider he finds in his bathroom, after all the spider is also a victim of the coming doom. He seems to be the only one in his circle of friends who hasn't decided that the apocalypse is justification for a wild Bacchanal. Certainly dark humor can be expected when portraying what pending doom will make people do but in my view it went a little overboard at times to the point of being recklessly irresponsible. Take for instance the scene of a father encouraging his five year daughter old to chug some alcohol telling her to 'fight past the burn'. When the film focuses on the personal relationships, however, it does a much better job. The film does try to answer the question, what in life is really important, what value is there in holding grudges.
CONS
This would have been a much better film if it hadn't stooped to cultural stereotypes, bad taste, sexual slapstick and profanity to provide it's humor (the scene at Friendsy's with T.J. Miller and Gillian Jacobs quickly devolves into trashy and tacky). The thin script delivers some characterizations which are just one dimensional caricatures, like Penny's musician boyfriend, Owen (Adam Brody) and Elsa the housekeeper (Tonita Castro). There are too many implausibilities as well, just one example (without giving too much away), do they really think a tiny old single prop plane is going to make the trip across the Atlantic?
All in all the film was a disappointment. It was a nice premise but never delivered on what it promised.
PROS
Steve Carell. He creates a sympathetic looser character for whom nothing seems to go his way. Even when he tries to be nice like deciding to be compassionate to a little spider he finds in his bathroom, after all the spider is also a victim of the coming doom. He seems to be the only one in his circle of friends who hasn't decided that the apocalypse is justification for a wild Bacchanal. Certainly dark humor can be expected when portraying what pending doom will make people do but in my view it went a little overboard at times to the point of being recklessly irresponsible. Take for instance the scene of a father encouraging his five year daughter old to chug some alcohol telling her to 'fight past the burn'. When the film focuses on the personal relationships, however, it does a much better job. The film does try to answer the question, what in life is really important, what value is there in holding grudges.
CONS
This would have been a much better film if it hadn't stooped to cultural stereotypes, bad taste, sexual slapstick and profanity to provide it's humor (the scene at Friendsy's with T.J. Miller and Gillian Jacobs quickly devolves into trashy and tacky). The thin script delivers some characterizations which are just one dimensional caricatures, like Penny's musician boyfriend, Owen (Adam Brody) and Elsa the housekeeper (Tonita Castro). There are too many implausibilities as well, just one example (without giving too much away), do they really think a tiny old single prop plane is going to make the trip across the Atlantic? All in all the film was a disappointment. It was a nice premise but never delivered on what it promised.
Cast
