Pitchforks: 4.5/5
How would humanity react to the news that they would be wiped out in three weeks, after a space mission meant to break apart a killer meteorite failed? This is the question that writer and director Lorene Scafaria probes in the unexpected romantic-comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
As it turns out, initially, the middle class people, financially secure in their white-collar jobs and life, would take the news in their own stride.
With social order slowly eroding, Scafaria depicts mature adult couples reverting back to high schoolers, and partying like it was 1984, complete with Wang Chung playing on the stereo system, as well as recreational heroin use going on.
Only this time, they’d let their friend the medical assistant do the injecting, while their children run around the house with sparklers.
Other oddities of Scafaria’s creation include a TGIF-type restaurant embracing all forms of inappropriate contact and experimenting with their menus, as well as an insurance company with key management positions suddenly becoming available.
This brand of comedy speaks for itself, and the director pitches this comedic material at the right level, as to not make it too awfully horrifying, sullen or screwball.
The most scary aspect of her hypothesizing is that people, when confronted with this news, could reach her level of nutty.
Dodge Petersen (Steve Carrell), takes the news about the meteor with silent shock. At the start of the film, his wife (Nancy Carrell), a few seconds after news of the impending apocalypse, flees into the night.
Unlike his friends, partying into oblivion isn’t what he wants to do with his remaining days. In fact, the immediacy of the situation doesn’t make him do anything outside of his regular routine; besides reflect on an old flame.
Enter Penny (Keira Knightley), a character who only could have been invented by a screenwriter that nevertheless gains humility and infectious affection due to equal part Knightley’s performance and Scafaria’s script.
With air travel canceled and landlines down, Penny is distraught over not being able to see her family in England again before the impending destruction. Dodge says he knows a guy with a plane, if she’ll drive him to his old flame’s house.
Their journey puts them in the company of a terminal cancer patient, who put a contract out on himself, the aforementioned hyper-sexualized TGIF restaurant, in addition to a confrontation between Dodge and the man who owns the plane.
Before the film, Dodge lived his life with compromise and missed opportunities. In Penny’s companionship, which his wife never reached, Dodge emotionally opens up on their quest in ways that weren’t possible before; he comes to terms with past decisions and she made him enjoy life again.
For her effort, Dodge falls for Penny, and vice versa. And with a perky lovable and slightly oddball performance from Knightley, it’s difficult not to.
Both actors sell this osmosis in their relationship with naturalistic interaction and subtle shifts in characterization.
Their performances in general remain shtick free, especially with an easy target like Penny, with her flapper haircut and traveling record collection. They’re all grounded in a reality.
They’re almost so effective with their relationship that one almost forgets they’ve only known each other for several weeks, have been brought together by circumstance, and that Carrell is old enough to be Knightley’s father.
Still, when their relationship works, it works, and becomes a small, but effective film about trying to find meaning and any remaining pleasure within themselves with their final days on Earth.
Reach the reporter at tccoste1@asu.edu.
Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.
