Safety Not Guaranteed stars Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass as its leads, she, an unpaid intern investigating a strange newspaper ad offering time-travel, and he the would-be time-traveller.
Plaza, despite her inability to conceal a constant smirk, brings a warmth and compassion to her character, and the chemistry between she and Duplass is genuine and electric. As a weirdo herself, her character is empathetic to Duplass' intense desire to escape life. Together, they're outcasts who've given up trying to get in, and together they embark upon reaching an out so far away it won't matter. What really sinks the film, however, is its offensively perfunctory supporting characters. Like some studio exec had a grain of an idea and added some obsequious and rote stock comedy elements to cushion that morsel into a movie. Jake Johnson, who's enjoyed some well-earned success recently in New Girl, is a relic of early 2000's comedy road movies, a mindless frat-brat who's never grown up. He has an arc, you think, but it turns out he's just an emotionally regressive arsehole who doesn't learn anything and still gets a hero-shot. Safety Not Guaranteed is a movie that feels wafer-thin and tonally very scattered, but it still manages to transcend the majority of its shortcomings and become something occasionally sweet, if instantly forgettable. Bonus recommendation: This movie would make an incredibly dour double-pairing with K-Pax.
