“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” the directorial
debut of screenwriter Lorene Scafaria, is all about the significance of love,
companionship and family as we face the waning moments of our lives. Nearly
everyone in the film deals with the end of the world in his/her own way and the
first half of the film is more comedy with a lot of what-if scenarios. How long
would people still go to their jobs? How long would the news broadcasts continue?
When would the rioting start? When would it stop? Would people choose to live
until the end?
The film opens with an Armageddon-style
rescue mission failing. Dodge (Steve Carell) and his wife sit parked in their
car, listening to a radio announcer reporting on the defeat of a shuttle
mission to divert an asteroid currently on track to collide with the Earth.
Dodge’s wife opens the car door and runs away, never to be seen again. Dodge’s
friends Warren (Rob Corddry) and his wife Diane (Connie Britton) host a dinner party
where Diane introduces Dodge to her desperate friend Karen so he won’t have to
die alone. Dodge ends up fleeing the city with his downstairs neighbor Penny
(Keira Knightley), who has just broken up with her slacker boyfriend (Adam
Brody). Dodge wants to go find the one that got away and Penny wants to find a
way to get back to England to see her family (all commercial air traffic has
been grounded). Here the film begins to shift tone from comedy to serious
drama. Nonetheless, the reason this movie works is Carell and Knightley.
Carrell has a sad center to many of his comic characters and here he plays a
man wrestling with the connections (and lack thereof) that he’s made and broken
in his life and his performance is understated and polished. Knightley’s
character, Penny, on the other hand, is more than just a free-spirited soul.
She and Dodge poke at each other equally and their odd-couple routine is wins
us over as we watch it develop first into friendship and then into love.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is a touchingly sweet rom-com although
it makes no promise of a happy ending. 6/26/12
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