Review of "Seeking a Friend for the End of The World"

Before I start giving my impressions of Steve Carell's mediocre disaster comedy, I'd like to offer an explanation on why I feel it necessary to review the movie now. After all, "Seeking A Friend," come out in the summer, disappointed at the box office, and left barely a ripple afterwards. However, after sitting through a panel in Arisia looking at all of the SFF movies that came out in 2012, I was surprised to this movie didn't even merit a mention. I'm not sure how common that reaction was, but it seemed curious to me. Say what you want, "Seeking A Friend," absolutely poses a speculative question; what would happen if the world learned its end was nigh?

The movie begins with a couple pulled over on the side of the road listening to the final word on a doomed space mission to advert catastrophe from a giant asteroid called Matilda. As the radio pronounces the world's last and only hope dashed, Dodge (played by a glum and taciturn Steve Carell) watches his wife flee their car and run off into the night, never to be seen again. Meanwhile the world begins to quickly fall apart. Riots spiral out of control, the economy grinds to a halt, people start throwing themselves off of high buildings. In the middle of all of this Steve hits upon the idea of reuniting with a long lost flame. Accompanying him is Penny (played by Kiera Knightley) an eccentric young woman fleeing the conflagration of violence engulfing their city. In the true spirit of road movies, Dodge and Penny encounter odd balls and danger (mostly of the comic variety) as they slowly and predictably fall in love with each other.

The basic problem with the movie is that the strong and darkly comedic potential of the first 10 minutes or so evaporates quickly and we're left with a standard, guy meets girl rom com set-up. Romances live or die based on the chemistry of the leads and sadly, in "Seeking a Friend's" case there is almost no chemistry between Dodge and Penny. Dodge, for understandable reasons, is a complete wreck and shambles through most of the movie like he's already dead. Steve Carell does a really convincing job portraying someone bereft of hope. Knightly's Penny is more vivacious but suffers from a terminal case of stupid ray, that annoying trope in these types of movies where all of the conflict and drama stems from one character's daft decisions. KnightlyThe scenes they share are just painful and awkward and frankly unbelievable. Imagine "Garden State" with Louis C.K. filling in for Zach Braff and you'll be close to just how ill-conceived this pairing is.

Which is a shame, because if I haven't made it clear, I found a lot to respect about the movie's set-up and distressingly abrupt final minutes. This is a movie about the end of the world that goes about the task of describing the final days with admirable sobriety. I sort of wish they had scrapped the goofy road trip element and kept with the idea of apocalypse as mid-life crisis writ large.

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation. Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...

The Dorsia Brevia Solution

While "Green Mars," didn't include nearly as much mind-blowing speculative awesomeness as the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, it did include one set-piece that I enjoyed very much: The Dorsa Brevia Declaration. As mentioned in my review earlier this week, the plot of Green Mars focuses on the approach of a second Martian revolution. The first revolution, as described in Red Mars, was a spasm of senseless violence, mayhem, and targeted assassination, accomplishing little besides the deaths of many, many important characters in the story. As would-be revolutionaries gather in an enormous lava tube named Dorsa Brevia, the central question is how would any future revolution escape the fate of the first. The process, which I'll describe below, was very familiar to me. During the course of my path to teaching history in Middle School, I worked at an afterschool program named Citizen Schools based in Boston. Citizen Schools had its ups and down...

Ancient Logic

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