Movie review: 'Seeking a Friend for the End of the World'

It's also the first directing effort of the interesting Lorene Scafaria, a New Jersey playwright, singer-songwriter and screenwriter (“Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist”) with a very dark, but ultimately hopeful sense of humor.

Featuring the unlikely pairing of Hollywood's reigning Everyman Steve Carell (fast emerging as his generation's Jack Lemmon) and British costume-drama diva Keira Knightley, Scafaria's smart scenario opens with stark news reports that a 70-mile-wide asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, and scientists have concluded that nothing can save us from the coming cataclysm.

With 21 days till impact, human reaction occurs across a radical spectrum: Some riot, loot and rampage; some party hearty and set off on hedonistic binges of sex, drugs and booze; some blindly hew to comforting routines, going to work as usual, mowing the lawn, walking the dog; some hunker down in bunkers fortified with firearms and stocks of junk food, scheming to emerge from the ruins and repopulate the world.

Our two mismatched pilgrims of the apocalypse — Dodge (Carell), a rule-abiding, nice-guy insurance salesman, and Penny (Knightley), a dizzy, free-spirited young gal at loose ends about her future — are neighbors who pass in the night without giving each other a second thought.

But dire events conspire to bring them together rather cutely, and soon enough they're fleeing a brick-throwing mob (leaving Penny's jerky, self-absorbed rock guitarist boyfriend, played by Adam Brody, to fend for himself) and are off on a road trip to fulfill certain end-of-life obligations.