This time, I am reviewing Lorene Scafaria’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” which stars Steve Carell and Keira Knightley. Below is the trailer:
Despite the editing on the trailer, which highlights the more comedic portions of the film, “Seeking a Friend” isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute knee-slapper of a movie. Yes, there are numerous run ins with oddball characters (shown in the trailer as the irresponsible fireworks dad, the gas-mask wearing survivalist, the unempathetic cop, and the overly friendly restaurant staff), but these colorful characters have an air of desperation about them, their strange behavior coming off not as eccentricities that had always been there, but more as dysfunctional coping mechanisms to distract them from their impending doom. The sentiment of the movie is not so much “the world’s ending, let’s throw a party!” and more a meditation upon how humanity might react to inescapable destruction.
Carell puts forth, as usual, a good performance as the sadsack Dodge, an insurance salesman whose wife (played by Steve Carell’s real wife) leaves him as soon as she learns that the world will be ending. In the face of imminent death, however, he does a remarkable job of retaining his composure while the world falls to pieces, carrying on with his job and his life despite the futility of it all.
Knightly plays Penny, a somewhat flaky young woman with her head perpetually in the clouds. Her bouncy optimism and whimsy contrasts nicely with Dodge’s orderly manner. As the movie goes on, Penny’s ditziness starts to grate on the nerves, though, but that seems largely intentional, on Scafaria’s part. The pair of Penny and Dodge serve as positive ideals for the end of the world, being optimistic and at peace, respectively.
The aesthetic choices of the movie are pleasingly subdued, with more shots of suburbs and corn fields than of urban riots and destruction. I joked to my father while we watched the movie that it was an alternate ending to “Armageddon,” but the common theme of an asteroid-related Ragnarok is the only real similarity between the two movies. There aren’t many explosions, there’s only one gunshot, and there are no montages of people waving ‘Murrikuhn flags.
I found the soundtrack to be more or less unremarkable. It was made up, as far as I can tell (I’m no expert on contemporary music) of classic light rock, and some indie/alternative stuff from more recently. I didn’t hate the music, but I wasn’t left humming anything to myself as I left the theater.
As far as plot goes, it’s more or less a roadtrip story, set within the framework of a cataclysm. After the first half hour, in which the characters are established, Penny and Dodge flee the city they had been in due to rioting. Both of them are trying to find their loved ones, with Penny wanting to get back to England to see her family, and Dodge wanting to reconnect with an old flame. The two agree to help one another, and they depart. To go into further developments would involve spoilers, but suffice it to say that the two end up getting what they need, rather than what they want.
All in all, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is a good movie. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve seen this year (Thus far, “Moonrise Kingdom” remains my favorite new cinematic thing in the world), but it’s certainly worth seeing. If you want a dramedy with a good heart and an existential crisis, this is a good pick.
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