Lightweight, a little sad, a little sweet, this apocalypse story is something we were eager to see, as we're Steve Carell fans (he was last in these pages in Crazy, Stupid, Love. and we saw him today in Hope Springs, but more on that in a while). From both of these it's evident that he wants to be taken more seriously, and in this one, though the situation is a dire one played for laughs, he does display the acting chops we knew he had, as the sensitive guy named Dodge, whose wife (played by Carell's wife Nancy) leaves him in the first scene. Disclaimer: we saw it July 1, almost six weeks ago, so I've outsourced my memory to the internet.
Keira Knightley (most recently in A Dangerous Method) isn't all that special as the ditzy Penny who accompanies Dodge on a road trip before the meteor hits--I would've liked to have seen someone funnier, but maybe director/writer Lorene Scafaria didn't see it as a comedy and that's why Knightley was cast. Scafaria's first produced script was Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and this is the second feature she wrote and the first anything she has directed. There is a funny recurring gag with the clueless housekeeper, played by Tonita Castro, and "Windose," a blue liquid spray-on window cleaner. Good cameos are to be had by Rob Corddry (Cedar Rapids, The Daily Show), Melanie Lynskey (profiled in Win Win), T.J. Miller (Our Idiot Brother, more), Gillian Jacobs (Britta on Community, cameo in A Solitary Man), and especially Patton Oswalt (last here in Young Adult). Martin Sheen (most recently in The Amazing Spider-Man) appears for an important segment in the third act. There are a lot of goofs, with spoilers, printed on imdb, and I will say that I noticed the one about the plane.
As I implied in my placeholder last time I tried to catch up (a losing battle), the deadly meteor is the same theme as the intense Melancholia, which we disliked intensely. This one isn't great art (we agree with the rottentomatoes averages of critics 52%, audiences 60%), but is mildly diverting, and will be coming out on DVD sometime this winter.
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