Review #1561: Safety Not Guaranteed.
Cast:
Aubrey Plaza (Darius Britt), Mark Duplass (Kenneth Calloway), Jake Johnson (Jeff Schwensen), Karan Soni (Arnau), Jenica Bergere (Liz), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Bridget), Kristen Bell (Belinda), Jeff Garlin (Darius's father), and William Hall Jr. (Shannon) Directed by Colin Trevorrow.
Review:
""We are not the first people to make a time travel movie, we were very aware of that. We felt if we were going to step into that arena we wanted to find our own reasons for why we had a right to do it in the first place. It was an opportunity to make a movie about time travel – why we all might need a time machine sometimes, to fix our mistakes. Much more human issues.”
There is a first time for everything, particularly for directors and writers. This was the first feature film effort for director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly, who had met as interns at Saturday Night Live (both had also been students at New York University Tisch School of the Arts in the late 1990s). Trevorrow had been making films since he was 12 and continued with film as an adult with his first short release and a documentary (Home Base in 2002 and Reality Show in 2004, respectively) before thinking about doing screenwriting, and it was meeting Connolly again on a task to do a script together that led them to become writing partners fulltime. Connolly was inspired by a particular ad involving time travel and bring weapons to write the feature (which by the time of him seeing it in 2007 was already a well-known meme), which he wanted Trevorrow to direct - which was done with a budget of roughly $750,000 over 24 days primarily in Seattle, Washington.
I will admit that this film has been on the backburner for quite a while, and the question always comes up after watching a film as to why I shuffled it on in the first place, whether it is good or not. Perhaps it was the cover for the film, displaying an advertisement that attracted the idea to do a film in the first place, which I repeated here to try and bring up a point: Who would be brazen (or perhaps bold) enough to do an ad like that, particular if they were actually truthful? Of course the actual advertisement was written in 1997 by John Silveira, done at the last minute for Backwoods Home Magazine as a joke. But hey, stranger concepts have worked before (I don't know, tell someone in 1983 there will be a classic about a time travelling DeLorean and the response would involve pointing out that car isn't being made anymore), so maybe this really does have some legs to shine with humor for its road trip to time travel. Oops, I mean bait-and-switch kind of road trip to time travel, since by the end of it I was not so much wondering about the machine itself as I was thinking about how disappointed I was in the overall presentation of its attempts at humor with quirks that seems more appropriate for tackier romcoms. But hey, let's talk a bit about the cast, since there is a small ensemble tasked to mumble their way forward. Plaza is okay, doing fine with showing the insecurities that come from one with flaws not easily remedied (whether as an intern or a time travelling partner). Duplass is technically right for the role, in the sense that I could believe the basic interest in someone with forthright suspicion and ambition for something more - but the ultimate goal and the reasons for it betray actually caring about him for the latter half, and by that point I also found the chemistry between him and Plaza to be on shaky ground more than the fulfillment the film wants to really portray. Johnson may very well be funny in other films, because he sure is a bland thorn as the third leg of this group (trio if one doesn't count the first time Soni that is just fine), a skeptic in search of a clue to be more interesting than surly pathetic-ness.
Exactly what is it about this movie is interesting enough to make me care about these folks? I can't think of a single moment that made me really smile or laugh more than the times I rolled my eyes at how it winds up the clichés faster than it can say the very word it aspires to be: "original". Maybe it is a film about what it means to try and yearn back to the past and what was before with the contrast to how it really went way back when. If the desire to go back in time really felt real and interesting, that might be the case, but as you might guess from my concealed seething disappointment, that isn't the case (one could just quibble about the potential paradox created by making a time machine made to prevent someone's death succeeding and then there is no reason to create a machine if they are alive- and now my mind threatens to go to paste, so I retreat to thinking about baseball). I think the nail that seals the coffin for my disappointment ultimately springs to that ending, one that quite literally was flipped at the last minute by Trevorrow, who stated later that the original ending involving the time machine not working "didn't feel right". With what has occurred not even ten minutes ago with the unfolding of a mediocre rom-com playing pretend with sci-fi, believe it or not it might have actually worked better with the original ending - because why I would want to see it work with a nutter at the controls like this? Sure, it isn't the first time travel film to involve theft to help build its machine, but there's a certain aloof quality to how the film thinks it can brush aside contrivances and a lack of meaningful foundation under the guise of seeming "relatable and human" while instead being a mumbling bumbling mess of mediocrity. To me, it would've proven pretty amusing to have claimed to have built a time machine on the premise of rescuing an old flame from death and then have it all literally unravel right there and then (or better yet, have them travel accidentally into the future, where they don't have to worry about their friends or family since they see the heat death of the universe), but then again this sounds like it is verging on what I wish the film should have been rather than what it is instead. Giving this an average grade is aptly appropriate, in that it doesn't overstay its welcome at 86 minutes while not being anything more than blandly inoffensive, which makes it better than just being a 5/10 film with no real high quality. In that regard, it is far too mediocre to deserve anything other than a mild following, constrained by an overindulgence of whimsy to hide its weak handling of humor and drama with wavering acting that nevertheless served as a distinct little film for its era in terms of independent moviemaking prevailing on tight budgets for rookie directors soon to be better known for presumably better features.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
