Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Focus Features | Release Date: June 22, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
12
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJun 20, 2012
It's more amusing than you might expect, and ultimately more touching than an eroding society around them deserves. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJun 21, 2012
Predictable, contrived, sappy and, ultimately, against all odds, remarkably fulfilling. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigJun 21, 2012
This is a romantic comedy for people who don't like rom-coms. There's no chance of a happy ending, but its tender mercies speak volumes. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJun 21, 2012
The film has two active virtues, too. It shows human beings in all their pitiable, noble, stupid or sensitive modes of action, and it reminds us there's always time to fall in love, if only for a few days. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumJun 20, 2012
In our summertime-movie world of aliens and superheroes who look all too familiar, Dodge and Penny look all the rarer in their precious humanity. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJun 22, 2012
Perhaps the best thing about Seeking a Friend is that it never ceases to surprise, as Scafaria's script consistently defies Hollywood convention in the most congenial ways. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJun 21, 2012
One of the year's most emotionally affecting movies. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJun 20, 2012
Scafaria gives her characters and the situation an absurdist tone that makes the whole concept a little more palatable. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazineKate ErblandJun 19, 2012
A charmingly lo-fi love story. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliJun 21, 2012
Sweet and serious as it is, the second chunk of Seeking a Friend is the lesser of the two - and hard to reconcile with the more acidic comic outlook in the film's first half. The obvious movie referent is Lars von Trier's "Melancholia," a much nastier film in a much lovelier wrapping: This one lacks an eight-minute Wagner montage. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJun 20, 2012
The best parts of this sweet film involve the middle stretches, when time, however limited, reaches ahead, and the characters do what they can to prevail in the face of calamity. How can I complain that they don't entirely succeed? Isn't the dilemma of the plot the essential dilemma of life? Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedJun 19, 2012
Intelligent, dignified and emotionally satisfying. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJun 19, 2012
Not mainstream fare, but neither is it as willfully obtuse as "Melancholia." Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJun 21, 2012
Scafaria, making her feature debut as writer-director, scores numerous laughs off the social dislocation that follows as people realize the apocalypse is imminent (there's a funny sequence at a suburban house party where no taboo goes unbroken). Read full review
70
TimeMary PolsJun 21, 2012
When Seeking took hold of me, completely and without warning, I was digging for tissues. It's a lovely surprise for the official start of summer. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonJun 18, 2012
With its sharp script and bittersweet humor, the audacious premise feels fresh enough to earn a large word-of-mouth audience among moviegoers who would normally avoid a more conventional rom-com, potentially becoming a left-field breakout hit in the mode of "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine." Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJun 20, 2012
One of the great things Scarfaria brings to this project is her apparent ability to convince a slew of wonderful actors to perform in small roles that appear in only a single sequence. That describes most of the actors in this film apart from the two leads. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasJun 20, 2012
Knightley is pure Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy, a vinyl-toting sparkplug who serves mostly to shake Carell from his dead-eyed stupor, but the relationship between the two becomes more touching as their wayward journey goes on. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnJun 19, 2012
It pitches a tone between comedy and tragedy that holds unique appeal. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJun 22, 2012
If the world were really coming to an end, we'd spend it with Knightley and tell her tag-along friend that there's not enough food for a 50-year-old virgin. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenJun 21, 2012
In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the times may be hard but the apocalypse is soft. Welcome to the anti-"Melancholia." Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJun 25, 2012
The whole movie is a good try. Read full review
60
MovielineAlison WillmoreJun 20, 2012
Combines a deviously tragicomic take on the approaching annihilation of mankind with a irritatingly unconvincing and unnecessary love story. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJun 25, 2012
As Seeking a Friend for the End of the World crawls toward its sentimental finale, you're rooting for that asteroid to get here, quick. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJun 21, 2012
After a sharp and promising start, she (Ms. Scafaria) 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. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyJun 21, 2012
Scafaria's movie never catches fire. The bad news: The end of the world comes with a whimper. Worse: And two wimps. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrJun 21, 2012
Carell's performance is enjoyable but safe, and while he and Knightley play well enough together, there's no genuine chemistry - no zap to convince us these two deserve to be the last lovers on Earth. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversJun 21, 2012
I never rooted for them as a couple, never felt a chemistry in their bond. And in a romance, even one with tragic notes, that really is the end of the world. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJun 21, 2012
What it doesn't have is a way of making sense of its comic and dramatic strains, together, in the same movie. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyJun 21, 2012
Starts imploding long before the massive asteroid hurtling toward Earth is due to deliver annihilation. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMark HolcombJun 19, 2012
By turns bizarrely affectless and then prattlingly manic, much like its dual protagonists. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJun 19, 2012
The casting is spectacularly wrong, and even on its own scant merits, writer-director Lorene Scafaria's screenplay has little insight into apocalyptic licentiousness, barring a tart line or two. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeJun 19, 2012
The end of the world can't come fast enough in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, a disastrously dull take on the disaster-movie formula. Read full review
38
New York PostLou LumenickJun 22, 2012
Has its laughs, but pretty much every single one of them is in the trailer. And even more unfortunately, the improbable new romantic comedy team of Steve Carell and Keira Knightley works about as well as you'd guess - like oil and water. Read full review
38
Washington PostAnn HornadayJun 21, 2012
A strange little movie. Unsure whether it wants to be a quirky, sad-eyed indie pixie or a brassy, raunchy broad, it veers uneasily between the two, never quite settling into a comfortable or recognizable groove. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerJun 18, 2012
A predictable, drawn-out romantic comedy that happens to be set in the shadow of impending apocalypse. Read full review
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