Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

This apocalyptic romance isn't apocalyptic or romantic enough to justify its existence.

2012: Focus Features

2012, Romantic Comedy, Rated R

Distributed by Focus Features

          I love everything about this movie except the movie itself. As I've mentioned before I adore science fiction. I especially like ascience fiction portrayed with a certain amount of reality preserved. This film, about a depressed guy and a happy-go-lucky English girl on a road trip to find eachother's families before the expected apocalypse, is caught between two worlds. One is that of a raunchy R-rated comedy, and the other is that of a gritty end-of-the-world sci-fi tale. No movie can sit comfortably between the two without feeling uneven. The apocalyptic scenes are dulled down to mere distractions from the romance which can't go too deep because death is on its way.

          As a comedy this movie is rubbish. There are very few scenes that deliver rolling-on-the-floor laughter. Sadly, many of the funniest lines were delivered in the trailers, making them dull and pointless when viewing the whole film. There were a few funny scenes, though, that wern't explored in any previews. One shows some people trying heroin because there's no point in clean living anymore. One character says "Do you have any Radiohead? I wanna do heroin to Radiohead." I thought that was hysterical. I liked the scenes that showed people just letting loose and doing what they felt like doing rather than what society told them to do. A married woman attempts to seduce Steve Carrell's character and he stops her because she is her husband's. She replies by saying "Nobody is anybody's anything anymore." Ideas like that came to light sporadically and they were suprisingly deep and thought-provoking.

          As an apocalyptic end-of-the-world flick it is also a letdown. It's not gritty enough, and there is little sense of danger. The doomed people of Earth in Seeking A Friend are too tame, too reserved; happy even, about the impending disasters to come (a meteor heading for Earth, in case you didn't know). I loved how the film opened with a radio DJ claiming that the last-ditch effort to save mankind, a spaceship called "Deliverence" with twelve scientists and astronauts onboard attempting to save the world when it desintegrates upon entering the meteor's gravity field, had failed. It alludes to something epic, a whole other movie that could take place in the Seeking A Freind universe involving those scientists and astronauts. The world in which the film took place felt bigger than what we saw on screen.

          The casting in the film was pretty spot-on, I must say. Steve Carell sort of plays the same guy he always plays but that's okay because he is great at it. Keira Knightley is excellent only because of her character. Her being British allowed for a heartbreaking plot-point. She can't get home to her family because the last airplane across the Atlantic took off before she could get a ticket. Imagine living the last three weeks of your life thousands of miles from home, knowing you'll never see your family again? It was more thought-provoking material that saved the film from feeling shallow. She delivers an incredible monologue when she finally gets to talk to her family across the pond on a satellite phone. I almost cried...almost. Patton Oswalt has a funny little role that he was great for. Martin Sheen has a not-funny-at-all role at the end that was well-acted. Adam Brody has a funny, although slightly annoying, role as Keira's ex-boyfriend.

          Overall I am definitely going to say skip this in the theater. There's really not much to it in the end. I wouldn't advise you see this in the theater but rather wait until it is on DVD. It is worth a watch but not urgently. It is a nice effort, though, from writer/director Lorene Scafaria and was created on a modest budget in this current bloated-budget film world.

          Side note: There are many odd turns in  theplot throughout the film that didn't sit right with me. The way the movie ends, though, is quite nice. The film pulls no punches in its climax.