Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

What to do when you know the world is doomed to end?  In this comedic drama, an asteroid is hurdling towards the earth and everyone knows that the end is near.  All efforts to stop it have failed and so all that is left to do is wait.   If I am ever faced with this situation, this would be the dream solution to all the bad mistakes that I would have had to make to find myself where Steve Carroll finds himself.

He plays Dodge, an insurance salesman who leaves work one day when he realizes the absurdity of selling whole-life insurance policies in the current climate.  His wife has suddenly walked off to join the man she loves—which Dodge had thought was him, but it turned out that he was wrong about that.  So he is all alone—he has few close friends, and we later find out that his relationship with his father has some unfortuante wrinkles as well.  Then he meets Kiera Knightley who lives nearby.  They talk in a way that you can only do with strangers on a train, and he gradually, ever so slightly begins to realize that she is the one that got away.  She is the love of his life.

They discover this mutual affection for each other as they collaborate on a road trip together—they first have to escape her mildly deranged boyfriend and some fairly serious rioting and looting in their city.  Then they have hurdles like finding cars, finding gas, and finding lost loved ones.  The landscape is deserted once they get out of the city, and they have a lot of alone time as a result.  It is a sweet funny end-of-the-world movie that will make you smile and think at the same time.