Review of Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) by Eric S — 18 Aug 2013

Even if you've never before heard of lead actress Aubrey Plaza, her name alone will tell you everything you're going to get here - quirk, and lots of it.

'Safety Not Guaranteed' is built around a real-life incident in which the following classified ad was placed in the pages of 'Backwoods Home Magazine': "Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed.".

Quirky, right? Yeah, well throw in an eccentric reporter and his two oddball interns, send them off to a small town to find the writer of the ad, and then have the writer, a weirdo hermit, actually believe he can travel in time. And then have one of the interns (the aforementioned Aubrey Plaza, all deadpan punchlines and damaged past) go undercover to answer the ad, at which point the would-be time-traveller guilelessly and unwittingly slips through a lifetime of emotional distance by being so damned peculiar and sweet. Super-quirky, am-I-right?

For me a little self-conscious eccentricity goes a long way, but thank goodness 'Safety Not Guaranteed' has more than just quirks up its sleeve. Its characters are genuinely charming, and although this isn't a belly-laugh type of comedy, the chuckles come thick-and-fast throughout. Plaza is an obvious stand-out, but Jake Johnson is great fun as Jeff, her self-appointed boss, and Mark Duplass is also very good as Kenneth; he kind of sneaks up on you through the course of the story, starting out as an indie-comedy cliché nutjob (he's playing a man with a high-school education who is building a time machine in his shed, after all) but over time persuasively shading the character into something a bit deeper and more sympathetic.

The time-travel metaphor is a little heavy-handed at times (this is a film about people connecting with each other in order to face the journey of life, about people overcoming the dangers of nostalgia and regret in order to progress to a healthier, happier future) but the film has such sweetness and sincerity to it, as well as an underlying current of melancholy that gives it a satisfying weight - not too much, you understand, but just enough to temper the kooky indie-movie atmosphere.

I don't know what other viewers thought, but by the half-way point I was absolutely stumped as to how this thing was going to end. Where was the "happily ever after" in this story? What were the filmmakers supposed to do when the whole time-travel metaphor had run its course and the characters had to face the reality that they can't just re-write history? The only answer (maybe Kenneth's time-machine is not just a metaphor) was (to me) only obvious in retrospect. It's a conclusion that could have been a disastrous deal-breaker, but which somehow manages to be perfect, and actually lifts what had been a pleasant time-waster onto another level.

So, in short, 'Safety Not Guaranteed' is funny, touching, surprisingly satisfying and ultimately even a bit unpredictable.

Oh yes. And quirky.