{"id":7856,"date":"2012-07-09T19:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T02:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2012-07-15T20:50:27","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T03:50:27","slug":"safety-not-guaranteed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/safety-not-guaranteed\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety Not Guaranteed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film (2012)
\nDirected by Colin Trevorrow
\nWritten by Derek Connolly<\/p>\n

Kendall Square Cinema<\/a>
\nCambridge, MA<\/p>\n

With Aubrey Plaza (Darius), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Bridget), Jake M. Johnson (Jeff), Karan Soni (Arnau), Jeff Garlin (Mr. Britt), Mark Duplass (Kenneth)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Aubrey<\/a>
Aubrey Plaza as Darius and Mark Duplass as Kenneth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A sweet romantic comedy about vulnerable fringe misfits, with a touch of Back To The Future<\/em> and The Time Machine<\/em> thrown in.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Darius (Aubrey Plaza), a woman in her early twenties, is out of place in the world, and out of sorts. As the film opens, she interviews candidly for a job, and her riveting honesty elicits a rejection.<\/p>\n

She is, meanwhile, an unpaid intern at an independent Seattle newspaper. <\/p>\n

As part of her work she gets enlisted to take part in a road trip, with her immediate reportorial boss, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson), and another intern, Arnau (Karan Soni). They are to follow up a strange personal ad from the paper looking for a companion to travel into the past, also indicating emphatically, Safety Not Guaranteed<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Jeff and the two interns take off to track down, and do a story on, the author. <\/p>\n

The boss, Jeff, however, is really interested in looking up an old girlfriend who lives in the same town. He soon focuses on that adventure while Darius takes a more direct role in engaging the time travel guy. <\/p>\n

It turns out that a grocery store clerk, Kenneth (Mark Duplass), is the source of that ad and he is a very strange guy indeed. While Jeff gets backrubs and eats nice meals with his old girlfriend, Darius gets to know Kenneth and to gain his confidence. <\/p>\n

\"Aubrey<\/a>
Aubrey Plaza as Darius<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Along for the journalistic ride, Arnau is constantly subject to taunts and urgings from Jeff to have his sexual virginity broken by some wild adventure or another.<\/p>\n

With vulnerability on her sleeve, the relationship between Darius and Kenneth develops, even though she thinks he is quite crazy. The adventure builds, as government agents join the chase, to a climax that departs from the temporally placid domesticated drama operating through the bulk of the film.<\/p>\n

Mark Duplass was an adorable schlub in Your Sister’s Sister<\/em><\/a> and here he is an adorable nut. He has strong good looks here, but the scads of apparent psychological vulnerabilities make that almost Marlboro Man exterior seem beside the point. <\/p>\n

Aubrey Plaza’s Darius conveys a real magnetic charm. Plaza plays hurt but strong particularly well, and her way of conveying Darius’ growing attraction to Kenneth’s shaky and vulnerable determination makes it all seem believable.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>
Mark Duplass as Kenneth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Dionysiac frolic fronted by Jeff is kind of out there and a bit ridiculous in the extreme, but Jake M. Johnson, conveying flashy and lurid confidence, is convincing enough in the part. It provides a good foil for the sullen craziness that Kenneth represents and the pained intelligence borne by Darius.<\/p>\n

The big boss, Bridget, is played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, who had a long-running role as Chloe, the wacky computer whiz, on the TV thriller on Fox, 24<\/em>. There she played an Asberger’s type with a heart of gold. Here she is a kind of Devil Wears Prada<\/em> queen bee. It is great to see her strut her stuff in a new venue and convey a totally different character competently.<\/p>\n

The shift at the end into science fiction mode is a striking departure from the general tone of the movie. I am not sure it works overall, but it offers a kind of transcendent charm. <\/p>\n

Without it, the psychological dramas might easily have been just as good. But the writers’ challenge to provide a satisfying denouement without its temporal twist would have required a kind of magic that even those hovering images from The Time Machine<\/em> and Back To The Future<\/em> could not competitively conjure up.<\/p>\n

– BADMan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film (2012)
\nKendall Square Cinema<\/a><\/strong>
\nA sweet romantic comedy about vulnerable fringe misfits, with a touch of Back To The Future<\/em> and The Time Machine<\/em> thrown in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-movies","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7943,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions\/7943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}