It would seem like Safety Not Guaranteed is a movie that was made in the 1990s and somehow got lots in the shuffle, only to be released now. It has the generally feeling of a generally safe and broad-enough-but-also-a-bit-weird '90s romcom (think So I Married an Axe Murderer) and seems weirdly to have no idea what's going on in the world today. Still, it's a generally enjoyable movie (with a very surprising ending).
At its core, this is a story about living in the past versus living in the present and future, or living in a fantasy world versus living in the real world. Jeff and Darius (Jake M. Johnson and Aubrey Plaza... yes, Darius is a girl... just go with it) work for a magazine in Seattle. They get tipped off to a story out in the middle of nowhere where there is a guy who claims to be building a time machine to go back and fix mistakes that were made in the past. Interested in the story, they go off to meet him and look into his life.
Darius meets the guy, Kenneth (Mark Duplass... yes, you basically need to be a Duplass or on a TV sitcom these days to be cast in any movie), who is at first weary of who she is and why she's coming to him. He seems paranoid and weird, but she falls for him right away. She never lets on that she's a journalist only interested in his time machine for the story, but they slowly fall in love. Of course the relationship is based on lies, so once the truth comes out, it will ruin their relationship.
Kenneth lives in the past and can only look back on mistakes he made (something about running his car into the living room of a woman he was interested in... ooops!); Darius is also hurt from past history (something involving her dead mother), and is interested in the possibility of going back in time. She's not as stuck in the past as he is, but she's not a very optimistic person. Jeff, on the other hand, is a rather brainless frat boy who is looking to get drunk and laid as much as possible. He is a buffoon, but a generally happy one with few regrets.
At some point the movie turns from a rather typical romcom to a darker, more dramatic heisty scifi movie (the time machine might actually be a real thing and not just a paranoiac's pipe dream). I rather like this pivot and appreciate that it's a brave, atypical move to make with the story.
Mark Duplass is becoming a very good dramatic/comedic actor. He plays serious better than he does silly-- and this role is much darker than he normally does. This is probably his richest, best and fullest performance to date. He seems to act in weird, small movies to make money to finance his own directoral work, and I really appreciate it. Sorta a comedic Wally Shawn or Sam Shepard, I guess.
This is not really an important movie, but it's a good movie. I forgive it for being a bit dated (I don't know many magazines today that would send a team of writers to a far-off town to write an article about a crackpot) because it's sweet and has a clever idea about what it is. It's a very creative exploration of a legitimate human psychological dilemma presented here in a charming way.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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