The world will end in three weeks. Bruce Willis and the oil drillers on the Space Shuttle Deliverance have been destroyed. They were mankind’s last hope. The asteroid will hit Earth in three weeks’ time. We are all going to die. What do you do?
What. Do. You. Do?
This is the existential question posed in “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”, an under the radar movie that might be one of my favorite movies of the summer. The movie begins with Dodge (Steve Carell) and his wife hearing about the destruction of the Deliverance space shuttle. No, Bruce Willis wasn’t on it. Maybe he was. I’m not sure. Either way, his wife responds by literally getting out of the car and running out of his life. Feeling he has nothing better to do, Dodge resigns himself to the fact he will spend his final three weeks alone, drinking cough syrup and playing his harmonica.
There is a cute girl that lives in his apartment building. Her name is Penny. She is played by Keira Knightley. She has just broken up with her boyfriend, mostly because he is a bit of a loser and a leach. Dodge and Penny find each other and bond over the fact she’s been inadvertently keeping his mail for three years, mostly because she was too lazy and aloof to just give it to him. This leads him to the discovery that his high school sweetheart sent him a doomsday letter proclaiming Dodge is the love of her life.
So Dodge and Penny set out on an adventure. If she helps him track down this long lost love he will get her on a plane to England so she can spend her last remaining days with her family. The rest of the movie, these two discover that sometimes you spend your whole life searching for someone but you may not ever truly know what your heart really needs.
Carell and Knightley have surprisingly fantastic chemistry. The movie is both hilarious and sad. There is no last second game changer that will save humanity. It is a bleak affair from beginning to end but along the way, there are some really great moments. Carell is great in these low key roles and Knightley just doesn’t make enough movies that aren’t period pieces.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is by no means a happy movie but that is life, isn’t it? Life isn’t always happy, you just have to hope you have someone in your life that is worth spending your remaining days with.
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