What's not funny about a doomed romance as the world is about to end?! Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the directoral debut and second screenplay for Lorene Scafaria (who previously wrote the oddly toned Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist), is an offbeat romcom, filled with lots of grossout jokes and a comforting level of sadness that's hard to find in most mainstream fare.
There is an asteroid falling to earth in the next few days and all hopes of human survival are lost. Dodge (Steve Carell) is an everyman with a wife and a comfortable life. As soon as it becomes clear that the end of the world is nigh, his wife bolts, leaving him alone to deal with his fate. He meets crazy English neighbor girl Penny (Keira Knightly) who is looking for companionship as she's stuck in the U.S., while her family is in Britain. The two begin a weird, funny friendship as he promises her that he knows a guy with a plane who could take her home. They go on a road trip, visiting some of the weirds throwing caution to the win in their last days as they drive to this alleged plane.
The whole film feels like it really shouldn't work; it would seem like it has too broad an appeal to really be funny and puts two actors with no particular sexual chemistry together to fall in love. Yet it does work -- in a very uncomfortable uncanny way (not unlike Carell's previous work in "The Office"). Knightly and Carell seem to be in two separate movies, he in a morose man-looking-back-at-the-end-of-his-life-with-regret movie and she in a zaney comedy about a magical girl who doesn't see the world as seriously as everyone else. But Scafaria makes these two styles work together by showing that they each like in the other person what they themselves lack. He's serious and she's silly.
I'm a little upset that the film goes from something a bit bizarre and unconventional to something more sentimental and conventional in the final minutes, but that doesn't take away from the generally good story and the very funny acting. I really like moves that take big risks, and this is not at all a safe, straightforward story. I appreciate that Scafaria presents a world with very few moments of redemption, where people pay for bad decisions and are mostly unable to change their ways (which is even more of a reason the last two scenes are bad for the overall film). I like the way she mixes happy and sad to make a richer comedy.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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