Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates, Review | Tagged: film, keira knightley, lorene scafaria, Review, seeking a friend for the end of the world, steve carell

Review: Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World

Linda Ge writes for Bleeding Cool.

Seeking a Friend For the End of the World started off promisingly.

The audience is matter-of-factly dropped into a world in which everyone is well aware that the actual end of the world is just weeks away. As such, most of the streets are abandoned, radio stations give meteor updates in between playing the latest hits, and major companies pick their CFOs by asking for volunteers amongst the five people who continue to make the trek to work every morning. It's a quirky, unexpected and engaging set up, though the rest of the movie has a hard time matching its promising beginning.

When Steve Carell's melancholy loser, Dodge, is unceremoniously dumped by his wife – she literally ran away from him as their car stopped at a traffic light – he finds himself facing the inevitability of the most depressing and unwanted of destinies: dying alone. We've seen this sad sack character a million times before, oftentimes played by Carell no less, so perhaps this was an early warning sign that the film may not be going to as clever or groundbreaking places as its premise and marketing may suggest.

Enter scatter-brained, flaky neighbor Penny, played by Keira Knightley trying her hardest to be unfashionable and unattractive, who reveals she had some of his mail, not knowing there was a letter in there from Dodge's high school sweetheart professing she still loved him. Dodge sees this as his last chance to not die alone, and Penny, seeking her own escape from the dying-alone fate and a way to fly home to England to be with her family, suggests set off on a roadtrip together. She's got a car to drive him to his long lost love, and he promises he knows someone with a plane.

As the pair set off on their journey, the film ceases to pretend to be a comedy and unfortunately, gets further and further bogged down with being a romance. The sly, subversive humor present in the first act all but disappears as the two totally ill-suited characters bond over long talks about their sad histories and relationship woes, of both the romantic and familial kind. There are moments of real surprise and enjoyment, like their meeting with a suicidal truck driver, though other moments meant to be comedic fall rather flat, and the duo do not ultimately have enough chemistry to keep the audience invested in their burgeoning relationship throughout.

The film also disappoints in the way it wastes the talents of its supporting cast, which includes Connie Britton, Melanie Lynsky, Rob Corddray and Community's Gillian Jacobs. The rather flat jokes they are saddled with do little for their proven comedic sensibilities, and the film also does not given them nearly enough screentime to make an impression. Carell and Knightley populate the frame by themselves for a good 90% of the movie, and as such, needed to be much more compelling to sustain the interest of the audience. They are not helped by some heavy-handed writing that practically forces an unwanted, unbelievable romance plot down our throats, along with an unsatisfying ending that flies in the face any character development or growth that had taken place in the scenes prior.

It may not be the literal end of the world right now, but there are still much better ways to spend two hours of your precious time.

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