Spend all your last remaining moments with your family...
Eat just about whatever you want and not worry about dieting...
Commit a crime without worrying about the consequences...
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World goes against the traditional big-budget end of the world disaster films that have come before it and decides to focus on the budding relationship between two characters as their impending doom is counted down before them.
The film follows Dodge (Steve Carell) who is unexpectedly dumped by his wife, Linda (Nancy Carell) as it is announced on the radio that humanity's last hope for destroying the asteroid that is heading towards Earth has failed. He tries living his life as normal, despite the end of the world being very close, but he soon decides that he wants to reunite himself with his first true love, his High School sweetheart. However, before he leaves he meets his neighbour, Penny (Kiera Knightley) who is having troubles of her own. She wants to get back home to the UK to see her family before they die (but the last aeroplane has already left) and he wants to get across country quickly (and she is the one who has a car). As they both make their way across the USA together, they start forming a close friendship and realise that it's never too late to find true love.
OK, so let's get this clear straight away. Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is a romantic-comedy. It's not a disaster film. You will not see the asteroid hurtling through space, you will not see the panic of the Government trying to destroy the asteroid and finally, you will not see the asteroid finally collide with Earth. Having said this, it isn't a bad thing that it's not a disaster film, because not once does it even try to trick you that it's anything different - you don't even get a shot of the asteroid in the sky from Earth.
Having said that, the genius in the film really lies in it's subtlety. Despite being a romantic-comedy, there are not really any stupid zany moments played for laughs (the closest being the scene in "Friendsies" - the cult-like restaurant that believes in free love since the announcement of the end of the world) and there is no big cheesy slow-motion kiss scene. Despite the relationship being a little awkward with the massive age gap between the two characters, it's largely played for the cute factor, as they realise that they don't need to hurry themselves to get to their High School sweetheart/family for company, because they actually just want to spend their last moments together. While you could argue that the relationship seems a little rushed - especially in the second half of the film - it does it all for the emotionally wringing final scene where the two characters just lie on a bed in each other's company.
However, the film is by no means perfect. One of the biggest flaws with Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World lies in it's casting. While Carell does a fairly good job in playing the awkward Dodge and Knightley does a passable job at the quirky Penny, the two just can't seem to pull off a deeply emotional scene. Penny's last phone call home should have been something really special, but it wasn't. Dodge's breakdown when his wife left him should have left us feeling sorry for him, but it didn't. And finally, when Penny and Dodge lie together for the last moments of their lives together, I should have been tearing up, but I wasn't. It's hard to say exactly what was missing from those scenes, but I think one of the biggest problems was that Carell and Knightley didn't seem to have much of an on-screen chemistry. I could believe them as friends, but the film lost me as soon as they started to fall in love, because I didn't believe it.
Finally, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is also another case of a film being wrongly marketed. If you have seen the film's trailer (which can be found here) promotes the film as a comedy, with an element of romance. However, the trailer practically uses every funny moment from the film and what we are left with in reality is a romance film, with a couple of funny moments. Literally, the whole second half of the film felt devoid of any laughs, and after the comedy build-up in the first half, I felt a little cheated.
So, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is a film that hits all the right moments but doesn't feel like it necessarily flows together very well. After a promising build-up, the film feels a little flat in the second half. However, I have to give it credit for it's fairly bleak ending, even if it wasn't as emotional as it should have been.
**½ / *****
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