I can't figure out if I'm supposed to be happy or sad right now. I do know that I liked this film and that I did get all emotional at the end. This movie certainly has its funny bits, but it has an equal number of touching, sentimental moments as well, which I guess is the best way to handle a movie about the end of life on earth.
Steve Carell does an excellent job as Dodge. He really plays it down, letting the absurdity of the various situations and the other actors deal with the comedic aspect. This isn't like his role in the 40 year old virgin where he is playing a straight man to the rest of the cast, he plays Dodge as this low-key nice guy who is willing to admit that he has wasted his life but still maintains enough personal integrity to do right by people and dogs.
Keira Knightley plays Penny, the opposite to Dodge. Her character is fr ought with absurdities, but not ones that were brought on by the end of days, but rather ones that she has always had. While more chaotic, Penny turns out to be a good soul, too. Knightley handles the role with the panache you would expect from her. She does a job that I put on par with Natalie Portman in Garden State - quirky but adorable, and completely believable.
I found this film really interesting for the way it showed how different people would react to the news that the world was coming to an end. Some people go wild, some handle it with grace. Most seem to not know what to do with themselves. I think this is a pretty good representation. I do think that there would be more lawlessness. There wouldn't just be rioting in the major cities with some people getting killed by the angry mobs, I think there would be a lot of people that were just, "fuck it" and would grab their guns and set out to see how many they could kill before someone got them. You kind of get a hint of this with Grissom's character, I mean, William Peterson's character. He found out that he had inoperable cancer and six months to live right before the world found out that it only had three weeks left to go, so he hires an assassin to take himself out. Actually, I'm not sure if hiring is the right term as much as just asking someone to provide a service. It does make you think about how you would handle the situation.
Of course the setting and premise of this movie is an allegory for how unpredictable and short our lives can be and often are. The message is that if you want something, you should try now, else you might die unfulfilled, unhappy and very alone. In the case of this film, that was going to quite literally going to happen.
One thing about this movie that really amuses me - at the very beginning of the movie when Dodge and his wife, Linda, hear about the impending doom, she just gets out of the car and runs away and Dodge never sees her again. That is not what's funny, that's actually kind of heart-breaking. What is funny is that Linda is played by Steve Carell's real-life wife, Nancy. That is funny stuff, and I guess being a producer of the film as well as a star does have it's moments.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World on IMDb
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