In 1997, the editor of Backwoods
Home Magazine asked friend John Silveira to write some joke ads that would
fill the classified section when it ran short. One was a phony personal ad, and
the other was this little gem:
WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke.
You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not
guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
Years after the fake ad ran, the magazine was still getting
curious responses about time travel companions — some were jokes and others
quite real. The ad eventually became an early internet meme and has lived on in
cyberspace ever since. Now the “this is not a joke” joke ad forms the basis of Safety Not Guaranteed, a spectacularly
charming romance about a man who runs the ad in a Seattle alternative magazine
and then falls in love with the intern reporter sent to investigate his
apparent lunacy.
Here the ad’s writer is Kenneth (actor-director Mark Duplass) and
he is certainly somewhat crazy, if not completely unhinged from society. He
sports a severely unfortunate mullet and faded jean jacket, like he really is a
time traveler … from 1984. His strained bravado and all-around macho behavior,
along with his lovable oafishness, suggests he might be a cross between Dwight
Schrute and Napoleon Dynamite. If neither of those names rings a bell, then
maybe Safety Not Guaranteed is the
wrong film for you.
The intern reporter is Darius (Aubrey Plaza),
and she finds the assignment beneath her. She’s tagging along with Jeff (Jake
M. Johnson), the article’s real reporter, and another intern, Arnau (Karan
Soni), a frail Indian boy who seems to be experiencing the real world for the
very first time. They’re all quite sure that the person who wrote the ad is
insane, but then they meet Kenneth, who confirms their suspicions. Darius,
though, sees through some of Kenneth’s oddball eccentricities and she catches a
glimpse of a wounded soul, which she immediately identifies with. They connect
further as het vets her candidacy as a time travel companion in scenes
involving gun ranges, exercise routines, combat training and mission
debriefing.
Romantic chemistry goes very far in films like this. These two
leads have it. They work mostly because they’re both so strange. Duplass has
this mushy face and kind eyes, and he makes Kenneth a genuine creature with
complex fears of being alone and unwanted. Plaza — who, as April Ludgate, is
easily one-third of the comedy on NBC’s Parks
and Recreation — appears younger and more attractive than Duplass, but she
makes Darius work by being plucky and resilient, and she never succumbs to the
clichés of the rom-com drama.
Safety Not Guaranteed has
another sub-plot involving Jeff, the lazy reporter who took the assignment
because it brought him near his first girlfriend as he veers dangerously close
to an early mid-life crisis. As Darius falls deeper into Kenneth’s time travel
plans, Jeff does his own time traveling back to his high school days. It’s a
fun narrative device that reaps its own rewards separate from the main plot. It
also suggests that director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly are
making a grander statement about time and how it plays with our expectations of
the present.
I’ve told you the plot, but I’ve been vague on many of its
details. That is intentional. Safety Not
Guaranteed has an interesting payoff that I wouldn’t dare spoil. I will ask
this, though: how far would you go to discover Kenneth’s sanity? I bet it’s not
as far as Darius.
Time will tell.
