Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Anyone for a feel-good film about the end of everything? I thought so. The fact that this film exists is an oddity, even more so that it's attracted the big names of Keira Knightley (A Dangerous Method, Anna Kerenina) and Steve Carrel (The 40 Year Old Virgin). The two things that initially drew me to it were a) the long title (it worked for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and b) the end of the world (I watch an unhealthy amount of films about the apocalypse, e.g. The Road). But did it live up to my expectations?

Keira Knightley and Steve Carrell master the nervous smile.

Dodge (Steve Carrell) is not having a great time of it. His wife has run away, turned out she never loved him and was having an affair. It seems like he'll be spending the end of the world alone (unless its on a Thursday and then his persistent cleaner will keep him company). Out of nowhere comes the eccentric veering on emotionally unstable Penny (Keira Knightley). Shortly the pair are off on a road trip hampered by various surreal encounters showing the extremes of human nature when confronted with the end. You can probably guess how it ends.

However, even though the plot is predictable, there are moments when the screenplay simply comes alive. Knightley gets all the best lines, one of my favourites being "I promise not to steal anything if you promise not to rape me". And the sheer randomness of some of their encounters on the road trip are wonderful. After hitching a ride with a bearded man who hired an assassin to finish himself off, they arrive at a diner where the staff have descended into a strange drug induced sexual orgy. Throughout the film Dodge carries a small dog he's inherited while Penny clings on to her record collection (I admit a bit of Florence would make the end of the world a lot easier for me).

Although Carrel gets a little boring at times (you feel he's been playing the same role for the entirety of his acting career, from my brief knowledge of his other work he probably has), his presence is essential to stop the film spiralling off into cloud cuckoo land. And he's the perfect match for Knightley, who provides the fireworks with cute eccentricities and frequent emotional breakdowns. In fact after this I've almost forgiven her for the various Pirates of the Caribbean films and the strange thing she did with her jaw in A Dangerous Method.

The director is someone you will have never heard off (Lorene Scafaria), who also wrote the movie. The reason you'll have never heard of her is that this is her first directing role, although bizarrely she was involved in another project called Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (which seems to be essentially the same, other than the fact that everyone doesn't die in the end) where she wrote the script, acted and wrote a song called The Twelve Gays of Christmas. She sounds just about as unhinged as Penny. Considering this is her first stab at directing, she's done an admirable job. The film is sleek, there are no awkward moments (a rarity in slightly 'indie' films, one of the shots always lingers too long or we go too long without dialogue), and despite it's flamboyant moments, it remains this side of sanity (which is more than can be said for the last film I reviewed: In Memory of My Father, although this is the same mix of outrageous humour and occasional poignancy).

What's even more delicious is that the end of the world seems to have turned many of the characters philosophical. The film invites us to question how we would react when faced with the end, and it questions if what we value holds any meaning if we're all shortly going to die. There are the predictable riots and suicides, but in a way we're led to believe that a little anarchy is good for us, the breakdown of order is presented as liberating rather than as some Hobbesian nightmare (hence why it's a feel-good film and not one to slit your wrists too). And Dodge and Penny are a wonderful pairing, and it's a shame to see them incinerated with the rest of the Earth. But such is life.

Rating: 7/10