Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World

What an odd film this is. It’s been ages since we’ve had a decent black comedy and the biggest surprise of Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is that it comes at you out of the blocks with some of the darkest humour seen for quite a while. Starting with a radio announcement that an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth we follow Dodge (Steve Carell), an insurance salesman (natch), who is pretty much just going from day to day despite there being only three weeks left until the old planet goes bye-bye. All around him though people are shooting up heroin, settling scores and getting the taste for rioting. Hell, there’s even a couple of suicides thrown in (one telegraphed, one shocking). Sounds pretty grim, huh? Well it would be if it wasn’t also very funny. There’s plenty of decent wit on show, from radio stations playing end of the world hits to local US news reporters slowly losing their sunny dispositions (“Traffic Report? We’re all fucked”) culminating in a genius gag concerning daylight saving time. Sadly, this is a film of two halves though. For as soon as Dodge meets quirky neighbour Penny (Keira Knightley) and they hit the gas together the film becomes a quasi-romance / road movie that runs out of puff long before the awful third act. Carell is well cast and there aren’t many better actors around when it comes to world weariness. Knightley struggles though, appearing to be unsure about how to play Penny. Not too sure why she accepted the script for this one as the part hardly plays to her strengths and it’s the same type of character that Scarafia writes every time for females, i.e. fiercely independent with a quirk (in this case, loving old LP’s - What madness!). You can argue that the romance between Dodge and Penny isn’t realistic, but the point Scarafia is trying to make is that people will make odd decisions when they know their time is up. There’s no explanation though as to how Scarafia thought the audience wouldn’t question the moment where the characters believe they can fly the Atlantic Ocean in a Cessna……

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
The dark aspect is great, but (possibly due to studio interference) it’s a shame Scafaria didn’t run with it for whole duration. Rating: 6/10.