A massive asteroid is coming to Earth. All attempts to stop it have failed, and there are only three weeks before it hits and wipes out all human life. What do you do with your last moments?
Dodge (Steve Carell) and Penny (Keira Knightley) find themselves becoming friends amidst all the chaos, riots, orgies and mad parties. Are they an unlikely pair? Sure. Is she every bit the "manic pixie dream girl" that seems to exist only in the movies and couldn't sustain a relationship in real life? Maybe. But with mere days before the end, it doesn't need to "work." All bets are off.
Elements of this may sound familiar (lonely guy finds whimsical girl and she changes his life, giant meteor/asteroid/comet is coming to kill us all), but it feels different because it's so sincere, so heartfelt. Yes it's a about an asteroid, but there are no shots of the President looking pensive, no ominous shots of the sky, no montages of world wide panic. This closest we get is a stoic news anchor, but this story is about Dodge and his new friend Penny.
Like life itself, this film is funny, it's devastatingly sad, it has questions and not always answers, and it has all types of people enriching the story. At the end of it all, some people want sex, some want drugs, some want peace, family, even death on their own terms. And some people just want a friend.
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