Safety Not Guaranteed: Exploring Crazy

I'm sure all of us can remember those awkward post-college transitional years when we were trying to forge ahead into the lives-that-would-be without any certainty of what awaited us.  For many of us, we had the memories of the lives-that-were to keep us afloat and reassure us that our tribulations would only be temporary. 

Darius (Aubrey Plaza) cannot recall a time in her life when she reached that point of reassurance.  To recall a time when she was last happy, Darius would have to go back past the lonely college years, past the wallflower high school years and return to childhood—a time when her mother was still alive.  Darius is forging ahead as the rest of us have done, working as an intern of the gofer variety for a Seattle magazine.  Working under an unappreciative, harpy of a boss, Darius likely has no future in the magazine business, but her interest is peaked when staff writer, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson), pitches an idea for a story about a peculiar want ad:

"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."

So she's off into the rurality of Washington state with Jeff, whose ulterior motives for accepting the job serve his libido more than his position, and Arnau (Karan Soni), an intern whose only exposure to intercourse is presumably an understanding of how dark elves or unicorns reproduce. 

While Jeff is running around trying to reconcile how a hot, former high school fling has grown into an aged, domestic divorcee, Darius and Arnau are charged with tracking down Kenneth (Mark Duplass), the man who placed the ad.  Donned in a denim jacket, capped off with a mullet, and caught babbling about quantum mechanics to his grocery store co-worker, Kenneth appears, at first glance, to be an open and shut case of crazy.  "Sorry," his boss prematurely apologizes when Darius inquires about him.  "He's a little…"  We understand the implication. 

Yet Kenneth's story does not appear as straightforward as your standard issue tin foil hat wearer.  He may nonchalantly talk about how action figures get lonely, but he's also smart enough to see through Jeff's big city ego when he attempts to apply as Kenneth's partner.  Feeling some female charm is necessary, Jeff sends Darius to get the scoop and she begins to infiltrate the world of the man who trains extensively with firearms and martial arts in the backwoods. 

At first, she plays the quintessential journalist, building up his trust, asking all the right questions, giving all the right answers, but eventually, Kenneth's sincerity, warmth and heart begin to overshadow the claims that he alone has discovered how to travel back in time.  He may be a loser, but so is she.  Like attracts like.  But if he is indeed as nuts as everyone says he is, how do you explain the men in trench coats who drive a black sedan and are scoping out his house?

Safety Not Guaranteedis a film that doesn't go in the direction you think it would, and depending on what you were expecting, that could either mean you'll be in for a pleasant surprise or a disappointment.  I find myself camped amongst the pleasantly surprised ranks, but even I must admit that my delight with the offbeat take on a high concept story is hampered by some glaring flaws. 

The film excels at heart: the unexpected tender moments that arise out of the meeting of quirky, awkward rejects that you'll only find in the world of independent film.  The focal point is, of course, the pairing of Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass, who create subtle intimacy through those minimalist, mundane exchanges that are only awkward in how genuinely they reflect actual conversation between aimless 20-somethings (a conversation involving chocolate milk stands out).  Both Kenneth and Darius stand out only in how they'd be written off by practically everyone else, but perhaps this rejection of the run of the mill rom-com types is what creates an inherent endearing nature that results in us pulling for them. 

And yet the relationship involving Jeff and Arnau is the most surprising, as two people that very much start out the film as caricatures develop into something a bit more layered.  Jeff's story finds no closure, and Araun's stands as a blank slate on which Jeff can project his own shortcomings. But their relationship as filtered through Jeff is a great insight into the actual ways that those of us who aren't time travelers have to confront our past.  While we hold out hope that Darius may get to transcend time, we lament with Jeff because as human beings our only way to deal with a past we regret is to move ahead.  He, like us, does not have the convenience of a mulligan.

While director Colin Trevorrow can clearly tug on the heart strings, there are a few too many cutesy moments in Derek Connolly's script that seem to be included as a way to cover up the fact that he pays very little attention to the narrative obligations inherent in a feature length time-travel film.  That's not to say that the filmmakers need to pay attention to the science behind Kenneth's plot, but some plot holes cannot be simply forgotten just because we may be touched by a camp-fire scene.  Yes, the "is he or isn't he” question is a MacGuffin to an extent, but what should be a major plot twist at the end of the second act is tossed aside pretty quickly never to be heard from again.  It's too big of a potential game changer just to overlook and it. It actually raises unanswered questions about the characters we're supposed to know intimately by now, the kinds of questions that make you go back and nitpick everything you've just seen as opposed to those that lend endearing ambiguity.  The tenderness at which Safety Not Guaranteed excels is also what holds it back from being remarkable elsewhere.