After browsing Netflix Instant's choice of movies for the day, I came across this one, Safety Not Guaranteed. I had heard about it a little bit when in came out in 2012, and for the most part people seemed to like it. Knowing my interest in movies similar to this, I thought I would probably enjoy it as well and decided to give it a shot.
After a little bit of introduction to our main character, Darius (Aubrey Plaza), the movie starts in a Seattle magazine's conference room where the boss is asking for ideas for their next big story. One of the writers, Jeff (Jake Johnson) pitches the idea that they should track down a man who wrote a classified ad asking for someone to travel back in time with him, stating that "Safety is not guaranteed," which is where the movie gets it's title. The boss agrees to pursue the story and sends Jeff along with intern Darius and another intern, Arnau (Karan Soni) to the Washington beach town of Ocean View to track down the man from the classified ad. And that's basically the plot: the three of them travel to this town and end up finding the very quirky and possibly insane and possibly and enemy of the US government inventor, Kenneth (Mark Duplass). Darius takes on the responsibility of being his "partner," and, as expected, starts to fall in love with him.
The movie chronicles their journey together as well as Arnau's coming-of-age-ish story and reveals Jeff's real reason for wanted to come to Ocean View-- to rekindle a romance with his high school love, Liz. Similar to the Little Miss Sunshine, which was produced by the same people, the movie has a very quirky vibe, but you learn to fall in love with the quirky people and all their weirdness. Each of the four main characters is dealing with their own problems, and in each story there's something to relate to. Darius struggles to get out of her "funk" after her mom died, Arnau is a skinny college nerd too obsessed with grades to have had any adventures, Jeff is worried he'll be alone forever, and Kenneth's only hope is to travel back in time and fix a mistake he made.
Although, in completely realistic film, the notion of traveling back in time seems ridiculous at first, Darius begins to believe that Kenneth can really do it, and it also brings her hope of saving her mom from a death she believes is her fault. As Darius begins to believe, the audience does too, and suddenly you're sitting there hoping that he figures it all out and they get to go back and do what they're aiming to do. The director, Colin Trevverow, did a great job of making the characters sincere, which makes the audience love them. Throughout the film, Darius slowly begins to uncover secrets about who Kenneth really is, and he becomes more and more of a complex character.
I think that the people behind this film were trying to make a statement-- that not only is safety not guaranteed in time travel, but in a lot of things-- in love and life and everything in between. Each character shows that through their own personal journey in the movie. Overall, I really liked the simplicity in the storyline because at the same time it was complex enough to be interesting. And, the ending will probably surprise you just as much as it surprised me.
I'd give it a B+
