Seeking a Friend for the End of the
World: ***/*****, or 6/10
Hollywood
has been continuously reminding us of the upcoming end of the world
slated for December 21st 2012 – be sure to note it in
your agenda if you haven't yet, so you don't plan early Christmas or
New Year activities on the same date only to end up seeing your
festivity appointments ruined – in the recent years, delivering a
stream of films either revolving around the day of reckoning itself
or the harsh and cruel life afterwards (examples include but are not
limited to 2012 (2009), The Book of Eli (2010) and The
Road (2009), some of them good, others not so much). Though such
films all incorporated their own take on global annihilation, the one
thing they had in common was the fact the world's demise is not a
laughing matter, echoing the billions of lives lost and/or the
endless suffering of those left alive. Even in multimillion dollar
blockbuster popcorn movies that feature some good-spirited levity to
keep the piece from becoming to much to bear for the spectator, the
catastrophe is taken seriously and is often treated as having a
genuine basis in reality for keeping it from being too alienating for
audiences, even though the implicated scientific foundations of the
films are utter bollocks (again, 2012). Only months before the
expected event itself, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
is added to the genre of Doomsday movies, reassuring us that the
Apocalypse is such a grand, large scale and unavoidable thing it's
okay to laugh about it instead of succumbing to depression.
Unfortunately, the delightful tone of hilarity dominating the first
hour of the film soon devolves into a melodramatic frenzy running the
second, which once again makes it hard for viewers to determine just
what to do when the end of times does arrive.
In
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the Apocalypse is
caused by that good old Number One suspect of worldwide destruction,
the big bad asteroid about to smash into the face of the planet.
Hardly a new thing for the genre, the film playfully reminds us of
similar occurrences in past movies, i.e. Michael Bay's noisy and
overly hyperactive Armageddon (1998), by having a radio
announcer state in the very opening scene that an attempt to send
astronauts on a space shuttle to the humongous rock, nicknamed
Matilda, in order to blow it up has failed: only three weeks are now
left for all of us, in which time we will get regular updates on
Matilda's approach accompanied by all our classic rock favorites. And
so the tone of the plot is set, in two different ways. First, it's
clear from the get-go this is not a blockbuster movie all about
showcasing spectacular effects in ever more grandiose action
sequences: in fact Matilda herself is never even shown anywhere but on the movie's poster. This movie
simply isn't about the Doomsday event itself, but about how life is
spent in the time preceding it. Second, it's clear there's no getting
out of this one, so humanity might as well enjoy all life has to
offer until then, a simple truth most people all too eagerly accept.
But not insurance salesman Dodge (Steve Carell), who finds little has
changed for him despite the fact his wife has just ran out of his
life. While his friends are all too happy engaging in carefree sexual
relations, illegal experimentation with vast arrays of mind expanding
substances and other activities generally considered to be against
the law, the only thing Dodge needs to do is convince his Hispanic
cleaning lady she doesn't need to come in next week if she doesn't
want to.
Warning!
Spoilers! Though admittedly a story about a man who keeps on
living his dreary life while all around him is quickly degenerating
into full blown anarchy is funny in its own right, the title of this
film makes it blatantly clear Dodge isn't going to face the end alone
much longer. Enter his neighbour Penny (Keira Knightley), a likeable
young woman who in many ways is his polar opposite, being much more
emotional and impulsive, but she too has just found her relationship
shattered and thus the two of them make for decent soulmates about to
spend their final weeks alone together as they share their personal
dreams and make a deal to help each other realize them. For Dodge,
it's a reunion with his first sweetheart Olivia, who sent him a
letter, which much to his dismay had been stuck at Penny's mail box
for months due to being wrongly delivered, in which she claims that
their break-up was a mistake since he was the love of her life. For
Penny, it's the promise of finding a plane (since air traffic has
been shut down entirely) to take her back home to England – you
didn't think someone with Keira's heavy accent was passing for an
American here, did you? – so she can reunite with her family for
their final days. Soon confronted with gangs of plunderers sweeping
through the city and threatening their safety, the pair embarks on a
road trip to search for solutions to both their challenges, taking in
tow a dog someone tied to Dodge's foot with a note simply saying
'sorry', which therefore becomes the canine's new name. A man, a
woman and a dog, soon sure to be deceased: it sounds like a good
recipe for a road movie containing ample amounts of hilarity, but
unfortunately from here on out the movie only goes downhill as much
as the time left to them to succeed in helping each other get what
they want.
Their
trip starts off promising though, involving scenes that manage to
keep the surprisingly feel-good Apocalyptic humour despite Dodge and
Penny's serious intentions. For example, a sequence that sees them
hitching a ride with a man in a pick-up truck who acts increasingly
suspicious as if he means to kill them – who would care after all?
– manages to turn audience's expectations on their head to
successfully hilarious effect when he gets shot through the head
instead, revealing he had hired a hitman to kill him and assumed the
two hitchhikers were about to pull off that particular job. Also good
for a few laughs is a scene based at Friendsy's, a restaurant where
the excessively cheerful and positive waiters aim to be the
customers' friend, where Penny's simple remark that it's Dodge's
birthday ends up starting an orgy. For a while these and similar
scenes suffice to keep the audience enchanted and engaged, but it
soon becomes clear the direction the story maneuvers in exchanges
comedy for drama, with a blatantly predictable and unavoidable
romance between Penny and Dodge as its centerpiece: however, it
seemingly takes forever to get both characters to come to the same
conclusions, much to the viewers' chagrin.
Such
shortcomings in the plot can hardly be attributed to the leading
actors carrying the piece. For Carell, it's yet another opportunity
to portray an agreeable but lethargic character, an ordinary man
thrown into an extraordinary situation and unsure as how to proceed.
We feel sorry for him as it becomes painfully clear there's just
nobody to share the end with him but us, something he doesn't even
seem to care much about until Penny walks into his life with the
letter he always hoped Olivia had sent him, giving him a final
mission at last. Knightley is equally suited to the part of Penny, a
nice, caring girl with an unfortunate talent for chaos due to being a
hypersomniac, but her lust for life and willingness to see Dodge's
quest through to the end makes up for this flaw. The vibrant (when
awake) Knightley plays off quite well against Carell's more ataraxic
Dodge and their shared road trip succeeds into eliciting ample
amounts of warm humorous moments until it becomes simply too obvious
the two of them are made for each other, a realization that just
comes all too soon for the audience to keep it compelled in the
film's second half, a flaw in the story we can only attribute to
first time director Lorene's Scafaria's inexperience as a writer (as
this is her second movie, the first being Nick and Norah's
Infinite Playlist (2008)).
The
movie's plot is based around the simple question of what people would
do if they knew their time had almost ran out, resulting in the
obvious answer – whatever they like, preferably if it was formerly
frowned upon – dished up in a not too gratuitous fashion,
refraining from too much sex and violence despite the movie being
rated R. It makes for a fun movie for a while, until the realization
that Dodge and Penny's own ideas about their end won't come to
fruition the way they initially insisted upon, though together they
can find a good way to die, something the audience is aware off a
full hour before they are, which leads to a frustratingly drawn out
string of scenes in which both characters are dancing around the
obvious conclusion, still clinging to their final wishes and the need
to make them come true despite getting ever more impossible to
achieve. In the meantime, the atmosphere of general hilarity that
dominated the film at first has been traded in for unabashed
melodrama, as the characters are continuously confronted with their
growing affection for each other and their mutual refusal of such
feelings in favor of helping the other reaching their obviously
already lost causes: even after the pair has engaged in coitus,
evaded dangerous situations involving looting and murder and has
spend the seemingly happiest time of both their lives the truth
continues to elude them, and the audience can only sit back and watch
the inevitable being postponed, wondering what happened to all the
jokes that got the movie off on such a good start.
As a
whole, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World means to be
both funny and serious, an inner conflict between two opposites that
clashes as hard as a giant asteroid would with the Earth. The
lighthearted comedic tone of the first half just doesn't reconcile
with the more serious but overly melodramatic quality of the latter
half of the film, leaving the audience confused just as to what to
make of this oddball movie. It's admirable to see a movie take a
whole different approach to the by now largely worn out though still
popular 'end of the world' routine, but the movie fails to fully cash
in on its original and offbeat intentions. The first hour of the
movie delivers some witty jokes and hilarious gags that fortunately
save the overall movie from full failure and make it worth a watch at
least once, but in hindsight it would have been preferable if
director Scafaria had stuck to this side of the story completely
despite her laudable desire to touch upon more serious themes as
well. Unfortunately mere comedy was not enough for her, resulting in
a haphazard plot that means to put no less than two genre spins on a
concept usually reserved for blockbusters, comedy on the one hand,
romantic drama on the other. The fact the movie can only do one of
these justice is a damn shame, but it's not the end of the world.
And
watch the trailer here:
