It’s a sensitive year to produce this particular film, but choosing to focus on the fun side of the apocalypse is where Seeking a Friend for the End of the World finds its roots as an unforgettably bleak dark comedy.

When we say dark comedy, we mean it. Be prepared to laugh at some things that will make you feel like a terrible person, because Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is emotional, shocking, and most of all, hysterical.

The film features several plot points that wouldn’t be funny in any other circumstance other than the end of the world, but luckily, that’s exactly what’s going on here. A guy lands on Steve Carell’s windshield in a suicide attempt ten minutes into the movie, and it sets the tone for the type of pitch-black comedy that you as a viewer are about to witness.

The world has been thrown into a panic, but it’s a funny kind of panic. For every suicidal trucker, there’s a foxy housewife that wants to sleep with everyone on her block before the big kaboom. For every startlingly real instance of dog abandonment, there’s a goofy and insecure boyfriend character.

All of these characters are sort of thrown haphazardly into Seeking, but since the rest of the world has gone mad anyway, they all seem to suit the world perfectly.

Speaking of the characters, don’t expect to see anyone other than Carell and Knightly for more than ten minutes or so. The film advertises a full cast of players, but roles played by Patton Oswalt and William L. Peterson prove to just be bit roles in the scope of the entire feature. In their minuscule roles, they do manage to prove Shakespeare (“There are no small parts, just small actors”) right by being just as genuine and memorable as the main cast.

Every performance in the film – including the ones given by the cameo appearances – hit their comedic notes perfectly, although some stumble a little on the complexity of approaching the doomsday. Carell and Knightly have enough charisma and talent to carry this movie on their own, and they very nearly do.

The only place that the movie finds fault is its inability to identify itself with a genre. This isn’t a deal-breaker, but it derails the film from its string of thought when serious and dramatic moments are explained and thereby undone by a “saw it coming from a mile away” cheesy joke. The end of the world is serious business, but when you throw too much salt into a batch of cookies, they start becoming something other than cookies.

Mostly, the film is able to balance out its tonal shifts in favor of comedy since the set-pieces are primarily comedic, but one too many emotional breakdowns between the characters reminding you that these are real people about to meet their doom sometimes slows the building momentum.

If the film must be classified, it would fit best into the “road movie” genre since it takes our dual protagonists on a journey to a series of locations, often finding time to stop for an amusing diversion or two (or three) along the way. It has no problem finding its place among the ridiculous, but more than once you’ll find yourself finding reality within the humor, and some of it isn’t quite as light-hearted as you would expect.

Possibly the best thing about Seeking is the dark vein of humor that runs through almost everything that the characters do. Sure, it’s the end of the world, so the standard speeches are necessary (even Shaun of the Dead had a few) but everything the characters do is based in either comedy or love, so it’s a delight to watch unfold.

In any case, if you’re in the mood to watch people freak out about the end of the world and do things they would never do otherwise, and if you think you’re prepared to laugh uproariously at someone getting shot in the jugular, then you’re ready for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

Grade: A-

Rated: R (for language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence)

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World opens in theaters on June 22, 2012.