Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

Directed by Lorene Scafaria. Starring Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Martin Sheen, Adam Brody, Derek Luke, Connie Britton, William Petersen, Melanie Lynskey, Rob Corrdry, Tonita Castro, Mark Moses. [R]

The end of the world is nigh, with a pesky asteroid hurtling toward Earth that cannot be stopped, and this is the time that Dodge Petersen’s (Carell) wife decides it’s time to leave him. With three weeks left to live, he unearths an old letter sent to him by the “one that got away” and decides to drive out of town to reconnect with her, joined by his neighbor Penny (Knightley) who wants to catch a plane and count out her final days with her folks across the pond. Reflective apocalyptic drama with heavy doses of idiosyncratic humor and Manic Pixie Dream Girl romance has lots of things that work well, but they don’t often work together; writer/director Scafaria doesn’t attempt a consistent bittersweet tone, and the material isn’t dexterous enough for a smooth shifting of gears. A series of highs and lows, as rocky as one would expect life to be with annihilation on the horizon. A cheap twist related to the timing of the asteroid impact is scientifically absurd, but at least a little credit is due the filmmakers for not trying to pull a sleight-of-hand on the ruinous inevitability. Aside from the leads, few characters stick around for long, and several more recognizable faces (Patton Oswalt, Gillian Jacobs, etc.) pop in for a couple minutes and vanish; Dodge’s wife is played by Carell’s real-life wife, Nancy.

64/100