I’m surprised there isn’t a thread on this movie already.
I had mentioned to someone recently that my list of favorite movies of the summer so far is suspiciously the same as the list of movies that Mark Duplass has starred in. Between SNG and Your Sister’s Sister, I liked the former better.
The basic premise of the story is that a group of writers from Seattle head to a small town in Washington to investigate an ad placed in the local classifieds looking for a partner in time travel. They head down to basically write a story about how crazy the guy who placed the ad must be. Events ensue
I had originally pitched it to my wife as an indie Sci-Fi film, which is why I wound up going to see it by myself. But the Sci-Fi elements were muted, and used much more as metaphor than anything literal. The movie is about people wanting to revisit the past, whether metaphorically or literally. The acting was great, and the story has stuck with me for a few days now.
My only complaint:
I would have liked it to have been left more ambiguous as to whether the time machine was real or Kenneth was a fraud.
There is, but it hasn’t been bumped for awhile. It is a good little film and I’m glad it’s been mentioned again.
Yes, and it’s also about two misfits finding each other. I love misfits-finding-each-other movies. I’ve seen Safety Not Guaranteed twice now and it holds up the 2nd time, even when you know what happens, because you like the characters, even (eventually) the jerk reporter. You see his character arc much more clearly the 2nd time.
I’m excited because I (fingers crossed) get to meet Jay Duplass this Saturday when he hosts a showing of Raising Arizona at the Music Box (part of a series with rotating hosts/movies called “Movies That Changed My Life”). Besides telling him how much I like Baghead, if I can, I’ll tell him to tell his brother Mark that Safety Not Guaranteed has some fans on the Straight Dope. Hey, maybe Mark will be there. You Never Know.
I thought it was okay. This was showing at my local megaplex (and at the indie theater) so it must have gotten a pretty wide release.
I did have a couple problems with it, despite Duplass’s strong performance.
I could never see Audrey Plaza as anyone but herself. I don’t know if it’s because Parks & Rec April is such a strong character or if Plaza only has one character in her. The same was true to a slightly lesser extent with Jake Johnson. I love New Girl and Nick on that show but it overshadowed this role a bit.
I feel like the socially awkward Indian kid is rapidly becoming a super-cliche. That being said, I loved the flames on the laptop.
The whole let’s get Arnau laid by a high school girl was extremely creepy and will not age well. Kind of like the rape scenes (attempted and otherwise) in Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds. I don’t know what they were thinking with that one. Yuck!
I saw it on the weekend and thought it was pleasant but lacked punch.
I thought the time machine being real completely undermined the entire plot. The heart of the movie was two broken and cagey people finding each other and slowly accepting of each other’s flaws to find connection. The entire conceit is dashed when it turns out that Mark Duplass is actually right.
I thought the sideplot with Jake Johnson refinding love was incredibly shallow and a waste of time. I love him as an actor but there was no real nuance to the scenes with his lost love.
That being said, there were some incredibly funny little scenes scattered throughout:
The birthday party, eating cake and slowly following Mark Duplass out as he was stealing the lasers!
The emo guy, visibly seething as Jake Johnson stole his girls.
and the geeky Indian kid passed out in the car the next day.
I know I miss a lot of good things but at times like this, I am so glad I don’t watch TV. These people were new to me and I didn’t bring small screen baggage to my viewing of them on the big screen. As I said in the other thread Audrey Plaza looked vaguely familiar but I only realized until later that I had seen her in tiny roles in the movies Damsels In Distress and Scott Pilgrim. Of course for me she’ll now always be 'Hey, that’s that girl from Safety Not Guaranteed!"
It’s a trade-off I’m willing to take. I’d rather have the 10 hours of entertainment from New Girl and 10 hours from Parks and Rec than keep the 83 minutes of Safety Not Guaranteed pristine.
When I saw the ending, I thought, people are going to take this in one of two ways.
[SPOILER]They’ll either see the time machine being real as either a total cop-out random ending, or they’ll see it the way I do… it recasts the rest of the movie in a different light. It IS about two misfits finding each other, but it’s also about a woman who supports a man that is trying to do something extraordinary.
And when you think about it, throughout history, the people who achieve clearly great things were thought to be out of their minds for even entertaining the thought. SOMEONE at some point has to be willing to look like a fool or else nothing would ever get invented, no progress would ever happen. And someone, somewhere has to be willing to believe in that fool, because you can’t do something like that without someone believing in your efforts.[/SPOILER]
And I think more than anything else, the movie is about that.
ETA: For me the greatest distraction in the film is the fact that I went to graduate school with someone who looks exactly like the female protagonist. When I showed my friend’s picture to my husband he said, “Holy shit!”
olivesmarch4th, what you said in your spoiler tags is not only one of the most beautiful things I’ve read on the Straight Dope, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve read ever. So clear, so simple, so true, so profound. I’m such a sap, but I honestly had tears in my eyes. Thank you.
One reason it made me smile and tear up was that as I was reading it, the first couple to come to mind was physicist Richard Feynman and his wife Arline. Her iconic line to him when he was worried about what his colleagues thought of him is so perfect…
Bumping this thread from the grave to say how much I was disappointed with the ending. Yes, it does recast the entire movie in a different light - but it was still a cop-out. They didn’t give any indication throughout the movie that Kenneth might have been right, and there were plenty of ways to do it. Have Kenneth tell a story about something weird that happened with the metal box in the old truck, any other weird inconsistency - maybe a newspaper clipping about Kristen Bell’s character’s death pinned to the wall.
I loved the entire 99% of the movie leading up to the end. I suggest that everyone who liked this movie in any way give “Take Shelter” a look - they cover nearly all these themes, but do so about 1000x better.
I think the cop-out ending would have been the stereotypically ambiguous one, where Darius climbs onto the machine, smiles, and we fade to black. I’ve seen way too many independent films of late that have confused ambiguity with depth. I appreciated Safety Not Guaranteed taking a bolder approach.
Isn’t “I have only done this once before” in the newspaper ad an indication? Unless your expectation was that Kenneth was insane, rather than just wrong. And if there is strong evidence, then it totally changes Darius’ arc. Instead of finding someone in the present to connect with, someone as disaffected as her, it’d be a purely rational decision to pursue a valid scientific endeavor.
Second the recommendation of Take Shelter, my favorite movie of last year. Loved every frame.
I think that’s a fair assumption to make if you want to, but I’m not looking for something at either extreme - I’d be happy with a subtle hint or vague allusion to it having been done before. I think that Kenneth’s reaction to hearing that Kristen Bell is alive was a great opportunity squandered in that regard. And Darius’ response to it was entirely non-committal, to the point of dismissive. She chose to not even deal with it, or press the issue on him.
Heck, she never even asked him about “I’ve done this once before”, did she?
I think the film had to end the way that it did to convey the message that the film was written to convey. It its core, SNG is a very positive film, about facing your present instead of being anchored by the past, about connecting with other people, about how life is marked by key experiences. Darius’ journey has to have a positive end for the theme of the film to work, so a vague ending would muddle that theme.
I think their responses were in character. Kenneth quickly devised a theory to explain it, because he’s the time-travel researcher. Darius approached it in purely practical terms: does this mean Kenneth is deluded? She wasn’t interested in the technical or paradoxical nature of time travel; she was drawn to Kenneth because he was so passionate and odd, not because she cared about how lasers allow time travel. So, it’s an opportunity squandered if the film was about time travel, but it really isn’t.
To the best of my recollection, no, she did not.
Just out of curiosity, how did you interpret / enjoy the end of Take Shelter? Spoiler box your answer please, since this is a Safety Not Guaranteed thread.
