Time Waits for No One

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012, directed by Colin Trevorrow) is a film I wish I liked better than I do. I mean, it has a charming premise and all, but it's so drenched in the lazy conventions of quirky indie comedies that I just want to grab it by the lapels, lift it up, and shout in its face in order to jolt it awake. I think my filmgoing companion had the right of it. When this movie wound to its end and its time machine finally showed up on screen, and after the credits rolled, he said to me: "I think I preferred a Delorean." Alas...

The premise, as I say, is charming. A reporter and a couple of interns from Seattle Magazine hie off into the hinterlands to investigate the man behind an eccentric personal ad. The ad intimates that its author is planning a time travel experiment, and that the safety of his prospective partner cannot be guaranteed. The reporter on the trail is the obnoxious Jeff, who is using the story as a cover in order to hook up with an old high school flame. The actual work on the story falls to his interns, Darius and Amau. Darius is a shy introvert whose anomie has left her adrift without friends, while Amau is a classic science nerd (he's interning at the magazine because diversity of experience looks good on a CV) who has never been kissed. Jeff takes Amau under his wing, with the aim of getting him laid. This leaves Darius to investigate the ad. The trail leads to eccentric supermarket worker, Kenneth, who has been busy stealing scientific equipment in order to build his time machine. Kenneth is sweet, but paranoid. He gradually lets Darius in, and surprisingly forms a bond with her. It's a bond that's reciprocated. The story stands in their way, of course, and the fact that Kenneth is surely crazy, but love finds a way eventually, as it always does in movies...

There's a lot to like in this movie. Aubrey Plaza is a fine lead as Darius. She's got the sardonic loner part down pat and manages a sensitive degree of loneliness and longing just underneath that. This movie is Plaza's show, make no mistake. I also like the fact that this is a time travel film that doesn't twist itself into a pretzel with the subgenre's usual paradoxes. It's using the promise of time travel as crucible of regret and redemption. There's some merit in this approach, because it enables the filmmakers to turn their lens on their characters rather than either tricky plot constructions or (worse) elaborate special effects. I don't deny that the movie has pleasures.

On the other hand, Mark Duplass is only okay as Kenneth, but his performance is hamstrung by the "quirky" way his character is conceived. He's a deliberate crackpot and a kind of magical idiot, and even the sinister hints about his character's motives at the end of the movie don't really enliven his performance. He should be more sinister, I think, but that's not the movie they've made. Jake Johnson's douchebag reporter, for his part, isn't a lot different than other similar characters and the writing for him is lazy. His motivation seems out of character, as do his actions. I mean, he seems to value shallow relationships with young women, but he finds the love of his life in his old high school sweetie and wants to settle down? Especially after slagging on her after their first encounter in the movie? It's a dramatic turn that's bound to give an audience whiplash.

The theme of this movie is regret and living in the past, which is all well and good, but it makes for a mopey movie rather than a quirky/funny one. It turns away from this theme eventually when it becomes clear that for most of its characters, the past is a lie. I like that realization, but it comes late. I'm less fond of the various tics of contemporary American indie filmmaking. In particular, this indulges in music montages as storytelling, but the indie music montage is totally cliched at this point, and so is its use in this movie. At least the filmmakers haven't bought into the mumblecore habit of hand-held cameras that wander all over the frame in search of a composition, but that doesn't mean the film is visually interesting, because it's not. Maybe it's the northwestern drear that sabotages this, because this looks a bit like an episode of The X-Files (complete with sinister men in black).

On the whole, I'm just not that passionate in my like or dislike. It's not bad. I can't in good conscience call it bad. But it's not particularly good, either. It's just kind of "there," and I'm probably going to forget it two months from now. I might remember the premise, because the premise is great. The movie's trailer, which emphasizes the premise is memorable, too. But the movie itself? Not so much.