Reviews
Empire Magazine
Ian Freer
“Once a riot throws Steve Carell’s Dodge and Keira Knightley’s Penny together, we are thrown into an episodic, familiar-feeling road trip with the mismatched pair running into a new quirky character ... around every reel change. There is some funny stuff here, especially in the margins — a crazy with a ‘The End Is Near’ sandwich board who feels vindicated — but the film is better on the growing companionship between Dodge and Penny.”
09/07/2012
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The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“We are not in the middle of a full-blown apocalyptic thriller, such as Von Trier’s Melancholia, but looking at ordinary people in the throes of an often comically dramatic situation. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t build on its virtues but tramples on them.”
13/07/2012
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Total Film
Paul Bradshaw
“Half Bill Murray in Lost In Translation, half his own lovable loser from The Office, Carell fits the hangdog-hero mould perfectly. Alas, it’s less easy to accept Knightley as a penniless, free-spirited bohemian. Her dramatic scenes might be some of the most moving in the film, but elsewhere she tries too hard to hide the pout. Tonally, Seeking A Friend is bittersweet – in that order.”
03/07/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“What's bold about this premise is that Lorene Scafaria, the writer-director, never once suggests that the planet might be saved. Instead, she gives us a sardonic, eerie vision of the ways we might react to the knowledge of our imminent extinction, and she does so without letting the film become a farce or a tragedy.
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15/07/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“You [also] notice the silly inconsistencies. First it's necessary to escape rioting and looting, but on the road trip it's pure American Pastoral. It's misconceived. If the end really was nigh, you wouldn't want to spend the little time left with either of these two.”
13/07/2012
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The Los Angeles Times
Betsy Sharkey
“Before there is even a flicker of romance, there is a very long road trip. It really serves as a walk down memory lane and a final chance for Penny and Dodge to mend fences, right wrongs, settle scores. She's missing her family in England and he has a plan to get her there. Though the clock is ticking and these are theoretically desperate times, they are never, ever, in a hurry. The film's pacing is soooo slooooow that the coma-like sleeps that Penny falls into are easy to understand, even easier to envy.”
21/06/2012
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The New York Times
A. O. Scott
“The problem is not that Ms. Scafaria ... takes her grave subject too lightly. Laughter is an entirely appropriate response to something so abstractly awful as an unstoppable meteor speeding toward earth. The problem is more that after a sharp and promising start, she allows the movie to collapse into a mild, lump-in-the-throat romantic comedy that is not made significantly more urgent or interesting by the prospect of global calamity. On the contrary, it seems downright unfair that billions of people have to die so that a middle-aged sad sack can cop a cuddle with a cute, younger bohemian neighbor.”
21/06/2012
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Scotland on Sunday
Siobhan Synnot
“The trailer for the film suggests that this is a comedy, but the tone is far more wayward than that, sometimes a drama, sometimes a sentimental journey and often spiked with hit-and-miss humour. The first act’s attempts at irony are often pretty awful, as is Adrien Brody as Keira’s whiny wrong ’un boyfriend.”
08/07/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
“I’m being harsh, but Lorene Scafaria’s film unfortunately invites a lethal dose of scepticism towards its cutesy last-ditch matchmaking, obligatory road-trip plotting, and thinly funny jibes at the rest of humankind.”
13/07/2012
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“There are two fundamental problems with this film and its premise. First, it is crucial for the success of a romance that the audience can find something to love in the characters on screen. And, while Penny is appealing in a fizzing, slightly annoying way, Carell seems barely present as Dodge. His performance is so flat that you would get more nuance from three-week-old roadkill. Second, in the absence of the special-effects bangs and whistles of the average Hollywood end-of-the-world movie, the audience will be looking for thrills elsewhere: specifically, the screenplay.”
13/07/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“Eternal moonshine of the mindless mind ...”
12/07/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“You will have had handfuls of wet sand in your swimsuit less irritating than this supremely irritating romantic dramedy.”
12/07/2012
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
“For me, the end of the world couldn’t come fast enough.”
13/07/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
“This dreary, lugubrious couple, who couldn't find a joke if it fell out of a cracker on to a dinner plate, prepare to face Judgment Day, and perhaps a playful deity is testing us to see whether we have any faith in the future of this world. "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Armageddon". "Armageddon who?" "Armageddon tired of watching this lousy movie."”
15/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
“We’re asked to believe that the love that blooms between Steve Carell’s lonely guy and Keira Knightley’s kook ... is deep and wonderful. The trouble is, nothing in the scattershot and ultimately schmaltzy script persuades us to buy that idea. ”
15/07/2012
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