Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Have you ever been watching the latest Hollywood rom-com and wished a giant asteroid would just come crashing down, obliterating every doe-eyed, cuter-than-thou stereotype in a fiery cataclysm? Well, though that’s not exactly what happens in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, writer/director Lorene Scafaria does use the doomsday scenario as a jumping-off point for her feature debut.
At the film’s start, we learn that a last-ditch-effort space shuttle mission to destroy the asteroid has failed and the human race has three weeks of existence left. Steve Carell stars as Dodge, a quiet insurance broker whose wife just opens the car door and leaves on hearing the news that there will officially be no reprieve from the catastrophe. After his wife’s abrupt departure, Dodge mopes around, dragging himself to his mostly abandoned office (where now every day is casual Friday!), and to an increasingly bacchanalian party where his best friends (Rob Corddry and Connie Britton) try to hook him up with an acquaintance, fearing that otherwise he’ll face the end of days alone.
But Dodge is seemingly as much disaffected as everyone else is panicked and trying to live it up. Confronted with such a specific time frame until certain doom, he naturally has been taking stock of his choices, and of one in particular: how he managed to dodge happiness years ago by screwing up with the true love of his life. (Did I mention his name is Dodge?) In the increasing chaos, Dodge comforts his downstairs neighbor, played by Keira Knightley. She is, of course, quirky (her love of classic vinyl records feels as much the writer’s as the character’s own), beautiful, and shiny like a lucky penny. (Did I mention her name is Penny?) Penny tearily confesses to missing the last plane home to England ever, so she won’t get to be with her loving family. It also turns out she’s been hoarding Dodge’s mail whenever the postman put it in her box by mistake, including one very important letter from that selfsame lost love and cause of so much regret for Dodge. In it, his past flame writes that she’s now divorced and regretting ever letting him go. Dodge and Penny decide to pair up and hit the road, to track down his true love, and get her across the pond somehow before it’s too late.