Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

2012
R
1h 41m

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

120K

YOUR RATING

Steve Carell and Keira Knightley in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

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Dark Romance Road Trip Adventure Comedy Drama Romance Sci-Fi

As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neigh... Read allAs an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

120K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 3 nominations

Trivia
Steve Carell and Nancy Carell, who play husband and wife briefly in this film, are husband and wife in real life.

Goofs
Dodge pulls out the vinyl album "Scott", Scott Walker's first solo album. He takes record out of sleeve puts it on turntable but "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" plays. This was by The Walker Brothers and was not on the album in question. Additionally, the following song that plays "Stay With Me Baby" does not appear on the album "Scott." Nor does it appear on the album "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." The two tracks only appear together on later released compilation albums. Coincidentally though, the first track on the album "Scott" (the one shown but not played) is "Mathilde" - an alternate spelling of Matilda - which is the name of the asteroid in the movie.

Quotes
[last lines]
Penny: I don't want to fall asleep. Okay? Don't let me fall asleep. Promise.
Dodge: I promise. What about your parents?
Penny: They're romantics. They understand. Besides, they've got each other. I just want to be with you.
Dodge: And I want to be with you.
Penny: I couldn't live without you. No matter how long. What do we do now?
Dodge: I just want to lay here with you. Just want to talk to you.
Penny: Okay. What are we gonna talk about?
Dodge: Where'd you grow up?
Penny: Well, I was born in Surrey. My whole family are from there. My mum was a journalist before she married my dad. They never fought. Or at least we never heard them fight. Charlie's the oldest, then Benny, then me. We had a sister but she died when she was born. I still think about her.
[*explosion*]
Penny: Oh God.
Dodge: What was her name? What was your sister's name?
Penny: Patricia. Patricia Hope Lockhart.
Dodge: That's beautiful. That's a beautiful name.
Penny: I wish I'd met you a long time ago. When we were kids.
Dodge: It couldn't have happened any other way. It had to happen now.
Penny: But it isn't enough time.
Dodge: It never would have been.
Penny: I'm scared.
Dodge: I... am madly in love with you, Penny. You're my favorite, favorite thing.
Penny: I thought that somehow we'd save each other.
Dodge: We did. Penny. I'm really glad I got to know you.

Connections
Featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #20.161 (2012)

Soundtracks
Wouldn't It Be Nice
Written by Tony Asher, Mike Love and Brian Wilson
Performed by The Beach Boys
Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from EMI Film & Television Music

User reviews327

Review

Featured review

The movie has heart and elicited real emotion from me.

There really isn't one aspect of the actual events of this story that isn't some kind of spoiler, the less known the better. It's better to watch this thing completely fresh. That's how I saw it and it made the experience far better it would seem. Without getting in to detail, the story itself starts off bizarre and it seems like they simply picked the wrong subject to try and make a dramedy about. Yet, getting to know and sympathize with Carell's character is what flat out makes the film. Keira Knightley is wonderful and this is probably the best thing I've ever seen her do.

The overall tone fights itself a LOT as it jumps from the morose to the absurd to events that just aren't logical. Still, since no one has faced the end of the world, what exactly is logical? They did respectfully touch on the aspect of faith but it struck me more that they went out of their way to avoid the subject for the most part. To me, that's playing it way too safe. They did that a lot with many subjects that you would expect to come up in an end of days film. Overall, the movie has heart and elicited real emotion from me.