a bland end of the world.

 'Seeking a Friend for the End of the World' Starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightly. Directed by Lorene Scafaria


   What would you do if you knew that the end of the world was just a few days away? If you're Dodge Peterson, played by Steve Carrell, you go on being the same bland insurance agent that you are right now. Your wife has left, leaving you alone. But you remain the low-keyed chatacter you always were.
     But if you're Penny, played by Keira Knightly, you zoom around, smoking joints, and making love to one man after another. Oh yes, and you're a real deep sleeper.
    "I could sleep through the apocalypse," Penny says while smoking a joint. Which is a useful skill to have - the  sound sleeping habit that is - because in a few days an asteroid will crash into earth and kill everyone.
     When English-born Penny meets finally her longtime neighbour Dodge, you'd expect all hell to break loose. But disappointingly, it doesn't. 'Seeking A Friend At the End of the World' is really just another road movie.
   To juice things up, director Lorene Scafaria has Penny and Dodge flee a riot and drop in on a few people in what maybe the U.S. northeast. "Hi Dad, I miss you like crazy," a tearful Penny says on the phone to her dad in Britain.
    This sort of dialogue runs throughout the film. I wanted to see more sparks fly betweeen the two main characters. But that doesn't happen too often and the film rarely shows us the stresses and strains of people living near the world's end.
     The flick is just too level-headed and too bland. Let's hope that director Lorene Scafaria has more spice to add to her next movie.