Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

A 70 mile wide asteroid will impact Earth in three weeks. The last attempt to save humanity has just failed. People are coming to terms with reality in a major way. Steve Carell plays a man deserted by everyone, even his wife. Keira Knightley is his neighbor Penny, whose boyfriend has just caused her to miss her very last chance to see her family in England.

It could be called a romantic disaster film. 

If you haven't been here before, please take a look at the Introduction to Generations, the Generational Attributes and the Four Stories in order to get up to speed on how all this works, and the terms being used.

No way to talk about this without spoilers, so consider this your final warning. 

Early on, it seemed clear that this would be an Artist story, about the futility of change. The  meteor mentioned in the first scene would strike the earth as planned, leaving the protagonists only that limited amount of time to resolve their issues. It's not surprising that this would not be a popular direction, and in fact the film had mixed reviews and was a flop at the box office.  It is surprising that the creators actually went through with it - that there was no attempt to turn it into a heroic or transcendent rescue of some sort. 

What it is is a romantic comedy and road trip movie. It's about a relationship that is doomed, but not because the couple is incompatible. As such it's successful, if imperfect. The opening works very well, as we see ordinary people doing exactly what might be expected if there were only a few weeks to live.  There are a few sections where the road movie slows down more than it should. There are other stretches where different reactions and coping strategies is impressively done. 

It's not quite a Crisis movie. It's showing the last stages, the descent to madness and the after-effects. Perhaps it's a post-Crisis world. The ultimate source of its trouble might have been trying to tell an Artist story set in the midst of a Crisis, whereas people seem to respond better to movies where the Setting, Characters and Story Type match with each other. Penny even alludes to this in the final scene, thinking that they'd be able to save each other. In Crisis periods, we want to hear about stories of success, not of failure.

Nonetheless, as its gifts and Artist story start to catch up with the world around it, it seems quite likely to become a cult classic.