. . . Even if You Aren’t Time-Traveling.
by Andrew Collins
We can immediately say one thing about Safety Not Guaranteed: it knows how to set a hook.
The classified ad that kicks this story into motion reads: “WANTED: Someone 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.”
Now who wouldn’t want to call about that?
Based on that ad (which appears on the poster for the film) and the fact that the film is a low-budget project with an R-rating, I expected some sort of experimental sci-fi flick that explores time travel in a clever new way.
Wrong on all counts, but not disappointed. Enter Darius, played by Aubrey Plaza (best known as April Ludgate from Parks and Recreation). She’s the girl who would be awfully cute if she weren’t so cynical and directionless. The film opens with her telling the story, in a matter-of-fact monotone, of how her mother died when she was a child and that now she can barely even remember a time when she was happy. At the moment, she’s living a less-than-glamorous life as an abused intern at a washed-up magazine. When the time travel ad comes up in a staff-writers’ meeting, she sees a glimmer of chance to break out of life’s toilet-paper-fetching monotony and volunteers to help with the story.
We then meet the rest of the investigative team, composed of Arnau (Karan Soni), a gaming-laptop-toting biology student looking to add a little diversity to his résumé, and Jeff (Jake Johnson), the epitomized douchebag magazine writer (whose first statement to new interns is that he slept with the editor-in-chief). When Jeff rolls up in a Cadillac Escalade SUV and announces that they’ll be sharing one hotel room so they can use the budgeted money for the second one on other things — no, not drugs, he reassures them, like eating out and stuff — we know their chemistry will be grating, but deadpan funny. And it is.
Their simple stakeout of a P.O. Box in smalltown Washington leads them to the most brilliantly crafted character in the film, Kenneth (Mark Duplass), an eccentric young man working a dead-end job as a grocer. He carries himself with the utmost seriousness and sincerity — time travel is serious business, after all — yet we soon find that he lacks the social awareness to know that you don’t need to ask someone if she has heard of Star Wars. He is equally unaware that having a fake ear is nothing to be ashamed of, and he makes Darius swear to “Never, ever, ever” talk about it. His dialog is further peppered with juvenile lines like “jerking around’s for jerks,” “when the heat gets hot,” and “the action’s getting hungry,” all delivered with complete sincerity. And he brings a similar earnestness to his belief in the legitimacy of his “mission” to go back in time.
In fact, Kenneth has all the marks of an inept conspiracy theorist: living out in the woods, worrying about people following him, starting dialogs with theoretical physicists online, sporting a quasi-mullet, and self-training in martial arts and marksmanship. Kenneth’s revelation of his reason for going back in time may be the only time in my movie-watching experience that I have laughed at a sincerely told story of a character losing his girlfriend. And I wasn’t laughing with cynicism, but with simple amusement, because no one in movies these days calls the drunk driver who killed his girlfriend an “A-hole” (rather than using the full profanity).
Such quirks make Duplass’s Kenneth intriguing to the audience and utterly charming to Darius, for even in their professional, mission-oriented relationship, each has found someone to be completely honest with — or so they think. The film raises the point that maybe we’d all be better off if we didn’t leave some of our quirky, childlike ways behind in favor of adult facades. Here, Safety Not Guaranteed proves itself intelligent and thoughtful as it displays Darius’s postmodern longing for genuine sincerity.
As for the rest of the eclectic team, Jeff pursues an old flame in a completely unrelated side plot, learning that he can still get burned, even after recognizing a woman’s internal beauty. In response, he embraces the sentiment of the song “We Are Young” by Fun. Via a few drinks and bumper-car rides, he drags a reluctant Arnau down the cliché teenage coming-of-age storyline: the losing of virginity.
For the first hour, Safety Not Guaranteed has all the impromptu wryness and dry dialogue of an indie film, yet it culminates with a shocking dose of sentimentality that seems to say to the audience, “Yes, this is still a movie you’re watching, and no, it isn’t so hipster that it takes itself too seriously.”
I just can’t help approving of this conclusion. Sometimes it’s fun to believe in happy endings, because sometimes happiness happens, even though — as the title reminds us — in the business of relationships, safety is never guaranteed.
