Sci-fi meets rom-com in sweet, unusual film

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The Canadian Press From soup to nuts: Darius (Aubrey Plaza, left) meets Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a paranoid stock clerk who believes he can travel through time.

Aubrey Plaza, best known as the dark-eyed depressive April from the TV series Parks and Recreation, has a comic persona that is simultaneously glum and funny, bleak and sexy. It's difficult to pinpoint her peculiar appeal; maybe Morticia Addams as petulant, foxy urbanite?

That quality might have made it difficult for her to find movie work as anything but a sardonic best friend, but Plaza is well cast front and centre in Safety Not Guaranteed, a comedy that takes a refreshingly contrary approach to the visual effects-filled sci-fi subgenre, the time-travel story.

Plaza is Darius, an unpaid, unappreciated intern at a hip Seattle magazine who jumps at the chance to help when cynical feature writer Jeff (Jake M. Johnson of the series New Girl) wants to write an investigative piece on a strange classified ad requesting a companion for a time-travel adventure: "Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed."

The intrepid journalists hop in a car with another intern, Arnau (Karan Soni), a kid even less worldly than Darius, and stake out the small-town postbox where replies are to be sent. There, they discover Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a flinchy supermarket stock clerk.

Eccentric? Definitely. A genius? Maybe. Delusional? Likely.

Plus he plays a mean zither.

Darius gets the task of answering the ad and convincing Kenneth she's on the level. He registers as a paranoid, ranting about being tailed by government agents. But against all odds, he and Darius click, unified by past regrets.

Jeff, it transpires, may have had a secret agenda in taking this assignment in his old hometown, as it gives him the opportunity to resolve a relationship he had with his old high school girlfriend (Jenica Beregere), now a divorcée with a penchant for baking pies.

In fact, all three central characters are haunted by past choices. Kenneth is the one who resolves to do something about it by erasing a mistake through a process as unlikely as it is dangerous.

Director Colin Trevorrow may have blundered into a miracle cure for the moribund romantic-comedy genre by steering well clear of all the rom-com clichés and embracing counter-intuitive casting and an unpredictable plot,

Certainly, Plaza registers as a post-traumatic variant of the Meg Ryan/Julia Roberts heroines of past decades. The closest Duplass comes to suggesting a Tom Hanks hero is by echoing the ranting involuntary hermit Hanks played in the third act of Castaway.

And yet the movie, scripted by Derek Connolly, has a beguiling romantic spirit steeped in Pacific Northwest melancholy.

One also may admire the movie's generosity to a character type that is typically treated with chilly disdain.

Hey, mad scientists need love too.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Safety Not Guaranteed.

Neatly, the script embarks on one journey while dangling the possibility of another: the prospect of taking a sudden leap from comic reality into the realm of pure imagination.

-- Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

Safety Not Guaranteed not only has dialogue that's about something, but characters who have some depth and dimension.

-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Safety Not Guaranteed is most vibrant and vital at its edges, in the way that the characters interact with each other while waiting for something to happen.

-- Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

It's brisk and assured and never begs the audience's indulgence. No time is wasted. The movie is, at every moment, either funny or pushing the story forward, or both.

-- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Safety Not Guaranteed is a fable of "redemption," and it's too tidy by half, but it is also very sweetly told.

-- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

You have to admire the fact that, rather than turning to the safety of snark, this little movie sticks to its big idea: All you gotta do is believe.

-- Christy Lemire, The Associated Press

As indie-film nerd-mances go, this one is genuinely sweet.

-- Karina Longworth, Village Voice

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

Movie Review

Safety Not Guaranteed

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass and Jake M. Johnson

Globe

14A

85 minutes

3 1Ñ2 stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 3, 2012 D4