Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Quirky little comedy that asks you to believe in the impossible. Some good chuckles and some sweet scenes between Plaza and Duplass, but nothing really of substance. But it's easy to sit through.

Great watch, will watch again, and do recommend. I love the philosophical discussions that happen in this movie, both explicitly and as part of the situations. I love the story within a story within a story aspect of the script structure, with multi-threading as well. While the roles are a little (by design) stock characters, their personalities grown and change and stay interesting while keeping their core tenants. The investigative style to the main story line intuitively delivers as a mystery, with proper drip-fed information and misleads. It all properly builds to a significant moment in the story where you begin to question things. I highly recommend this for fans of conspiracy, time-travel, mysteries, or just weirdos with wishful thinking.

I wanted to watch this movie because I like stories about time travel. It turns out it isn’t really a time travel movie, though one character says he has done it and plans to do it again, and there is a lot of talking about traveling into the past. But that is not the point. It is a an entertaining movie for the patient viewer who doesn’t mind an oddball comedy. There is witty dialogue, especially observations drily delivered by lead character Darius. There are a couple of ordinary and almost cliched subplots involving the two men accompanying her on the investigative assignment to talk to the alleged time traveler, so don’t go to the fridge for a snack when she is onscreen. Fortunately that is for most of the scenes. I don’t know that I will ever watch it again, because I am not young and there are a lot of movies I still need to watch. But neither do I regret the 90 minutes I spent with it. As a final side note, the movie ends where many time travel films begin, but I will say no more than that.