Review of Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) by Vonunion — 02 Nov 2012

Safety Not Guaranteed starts off like a film with promise. Remember how you felt when you first watched Little Miss Sunshine? Yeah, it starts off like that. But it doesn't take much longer than twenty or thirty minutes for Aubrey Plaza's one dimensional, too-cool-to-be-here attitude to completely remove the viewer from any dedication to her character.

It's all the "you're stupid" blank stares you've come to love from her character in Parks and Rec...only for way longer. The same goes for Jake Johnson, who makes you think he is going to be hilarious for the whole film until you realize he's really just the cliche alcoholic **** writer with a silly story arc of his own in the film that has literally no payoff or relevance to the overall plot.

With that being said, Mark Duplass as the paranoid time traveler is just really fantastic. His character distracted me from Plaza and Johnson's super indie, first world problematics and gave me a reason to stay awake for the entire film.

He even performs a beautiful song somewhere near the end. But then there's "the end." I've heard other critics give the ending of this movie a lot of praise. To be frank, I don't know why. It has a good ending the same way The Sopranos had a good ending.

It just ends. So if you're looking for the heartfelt, dramatic comedy romp with a wild storyline and goosebumps-inducing ending...you're not going to get it. But I suppose if you have an hour and a half to spare, you can start this film up and enjoy Duplass being a stupidly good actor.