Safety Not Guaranteed Reviews

Following his monster hit with 'Jurassic World', I was rather curious  to see Colin Trevorrow's previous movie which was also his directing debut, especially since it was rather well received. Well, first of all, the thing that I really enjoyed about this movie is how difficult, in fact, how impossible it is to really define it. Indeed, it was neither a quirky indie romance, a comedy,  a drama, a thriller or some science-fiction and the fact  that it never truly belonged specifically to one of these genres made the whole thing quite intriguing. And yet, I'm afraid it didn't really work for me. Indeed,  the main issue I had was that none of the characters involved was really fun, entertaining  or interesting enough. I have to admit it, Audrey Plaza was really charming and managed to make her character slightly more intriguing than the rest but it was still not enough, I'm afraid. At the end of the day, I had the feeling that I was following 3 social losers who were going after another loser with possibly some major mental issues. As a result, to be honest, the whole thing was in fact almost depressing to watch and I doubt that it was the effect that the makers were looking for. Anyway, to conclude, even though I didn’t really connect with the damned thing, it was still a decent watch and I think it is definitely worth a look though. 

Safety Not Guaranteed is one of those blandly smug indie films that suddenly turn cloyingly earnest in the end, wanting to play it both ways. Granted, I found some of the tone and treatment of Mark Duplass’s character to be generally questionable throughout, turning him from a deeply emotionally damaged man to just a quirky eccentric by the end being the main offender. But damn if I didn’t stick it out for Aubrey Plaza’s pleasingly acerbic and tender lead performance.

Perhaps my biggest problem with Safety Not Guaranteed is that ending, which tosses out the main thrust of the film up to that point: “You can’t go back.” As the film neared its conclusion I began to have a sinking feeling in my stomach that they were going to abandon everything they had built up to that point and make the time travel actually work. They did, and I think the film’s easy out of a happy ending was a betrayal of the emotionally grounded narrative up to that point. But is it really a happy ending? There’s a brighter future standing in front of them, but they can’t see past their specific hurts to acknowledge that.