REVIEW: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

7/10 – A Rewatcher (If you remember it)

I really wanted to love this movie, before I saw it.

Cheesy end of days? Amazing. Deadpan depression about the event, even better. An impromptu adventure with nothing to lose? Steve Carell? I am down for this film.

And those elements made this movie good. I really enjoyed the approach where people no longer felt obligated to hold back, and an exploration of how humans would react among a broad spectrum. I don’t really have anything negative to say even though I am building up to it. It was all of those things that I wanted. 

My only criticism is that it gets slow in places, and therefore it is not as memorable as it should have been. In fact, there isn’t much about it that I did remember. It was like they showed their hand in the first 20 minutes/in the trailer so there was no big surprises along the way. When party at the beginning of the movie shows white collar people having a party, they break out every outfit they never wore, fireworks, deep down family dirt, three-ways, and heroine… the friendlies restaurant that they go to where everyone lets go of their inhibitions seems tame by comparison.

The whole movie is an exploration of what happens when reality really hits and it felt real when reality really did hit. Steve Carell did a brilliant job showing that not everyone was ready to celebrate the end of their life. But it lacked that real heavy hitting emotional punch that this movie needed to drive it home.

IMDb - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Wikipedia - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Rotten Tomatoes - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (56%)
Amazon.ca - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World