Moments in Time
As a child Darius (Aubrey Plaza) always expected the best but now as a young intern for a magazine she now expects purely the worst. She also finds herself with fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) as part of a team headed up by Jeff (Jake M Johnson) to investigate an advert in a paper looking for someone to share a time travelling trip. Their investigations lead them to Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a shelf stacker in a supermarket who Darius sets about gaining his confidence in order to get the inside track on what he us up to. But as Darius spends time with Kenneth she finds herself torn as she likes him but has her professional obligations to uphold.
Oh this doesn't bode well were the words I wrote down as "Safety Not Guaranteed" started as we had lame humour from Darius walking in to a lift and just saying wassup to the other person in it to Jeff referring to her as the lesbian when he picks her for the investigation. I have lost track of how many times I have come across jokes similar to these and whilst they are little more than filler jokes the familiarity of them does not raise the spirits. And to be honest watching Jake Johnson playing this laid back editor who talks about hooking up with a girl he got a blow job from as a teenager does little to lift it despite Johnson's natural likeability.
But then "Safety Not Guaranteed" starts to reveal itself and characters who are simply annoying begin to reveal their human side. Avoiding detail we have the tail chasing Jeff actually showing that there is more to him than being an obnoxious stereotype and we also get to see Darius showing her less cynical side. The thing is that whilst all this is actually pleasant what actually goes on in the movie is not that interesting. It is almost a case that it tries too hard to be off kilter and quirky which frequently makes it feel like it is forcing the humour.
The ends result of all this is that "Safety Not Guaranteed" ends up a movie of not what happens but about the characters and how much you warm to them. But it ends up very uneven with all the characters having their appealing side but also their annoying side.
What this all boils down to is that "Safety Not Guaranteed" is very much a movie for those who are big fans of Aubrey Plaza. But for general movie fans the unevenness of the story and the characters ends up making it a movie which occasionally grabs your attention but frequently loses it as well.
