Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World Review

8th Jul 2012

A Keira Knightly film I don’t hate? Surely it isn’t possible. Seeking a Friend introduces a new take on the classic Armageddon film with some hilarious scenes and a surprisingly bittersweet ending.

Steve Carell plays Dodge, who’s wife literally runs away from him when hearing that they are just months away from an asteroid obliterating life on Earth. His friends attempt to palm him off to another woman so he doesn’t have to die miserable and alone, but Dodge isn’t about to pushed out of his wallowing so easily. While everyone is trying to come to terms with the end of the world, he’s struggling to come to terms with the end of his marriage.

Keira Knightly plays Penny, his English neighbour who reveals a secret that turns his sadness into rage. When looters ransack their building, they run away together, determined to find Dodge’s long lost high school sweetheart and a plane to get Penny back to England.

Steve Carell is confident in his middle-aged sad man role, but shows a lot of heart in his performance in this film. Keira Knightly doesn’t do the pouting face that much, but enough to be consistently distracting. Her acting otherwise is pretty good, but anything that involves her talking just comes across hugely disingenuous. This is a real shame became Carell is at his best here, and is utterly heartbreaking in scenes with his family. He carries off a very beautiful ending that is slightly marred by a second ending, but is very surprising in a film that seemed somewhat standard up till this point.

Aside from the story itself, there are some great comedy moments in this film; the father teaching his 6-year to drink cosmos – ‘work through the burn!’ – and Adam Brody using his girlfriend as a human shield are just a couple. The concept that Dodge and about four of his colleagues still go into work is hilarious. Martin Sheen stands out as the leather-jacket-and-pyjama wearing father, but isn’t utilised enough. It’s a bit of a road movie, in the sense that they meet plenty of mental characters on the way, but it all seems a little too contrived.

I wouldn’t know whether to give it a 2 or a 3 out of five, because it’s not good, but it’s close to being good. It starts out well, but essentially when Keira comes into the picture, it’s just hard not to get frustrated with her acting. It feels very saggy in the middle and for me Carell alone on the screen and all the little gags is where this film really excels. Not worth seeing in the cinema, but definitely a Sunday afternoon DVD.