408. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Running Time: 86 mins

Safety Not Guaranteed is an American film about an intern at a magazine company who goes to find a man who has placed an ad in the newspaper asking for a companion to travel back in time with him, and after spending time with the man, she begins to wonder whether he’s really insane or not.

This is one of the strangest and quirkiest films I’ve ever seen. It was a fantastically written story, with fascinating relationships being established between very well established characters throughout.

This film was especially well written in my opinion. Despite not being the funniest thing ever, I really enjoyed the story pretty much from start to finish, which was made all the more entertaining by heaps of fantastic dialogue throughout.

The character of Kenneth, the supposed ‘time traveller’ was extremely interesting to look into as this film went on. You could see from the start that something wasn’t right about him, however he was a very appealing character to follow throughout, because the sheer bizarreness of his claim to time travel made him a completely unpredictable enigma: ‘can he travel in time or not?’, I ended up asking myself every minute.

Also, the way that you could see his newfound relationship with the woman, Darius, was affecting him was another thing that was indeed interesting to look at. Avoiding the romance element for about half the film, it was a fascinating story that unfolded.

There were only a couple of things that annoyed me about this film. Firstly, the romantic bit in the middle that lasted half an hour, and was barely plot-related was incredibly tedious. Secondly, they kept postponing the time travel again and again, and it seemed as if it was obvious this guy was a fake, taking away a part of my intrigue in the story.

Overall, I’ll give this a 7.0, because it was an interesting, well-written and original story, but not necessarily hilarious or gripping to watch for the duration.