Safety Not Guaranteed (4/5 Stars)

The source material for this movie is a real classified advertisement from 1997 that received thousands of responses. It went like this:

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.

In the early 2000s, it became an Internet sensation when a photo of a man with the most serious 80s mullet in the world was added to classified advertisement. Now it is 2012 and there is a movie. Given the source material you would probably expect a dumb action/comedy with plenty of low budget action and at least one great mullet. And you would be completely wrong. The movie, “Safety Not Guaranteed,” written by Derek Connolly, directed by Colin Trevorrow, and starring Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza, has action and comedy but also comes with several fully developed characters, a totally unpredictable plotline, and a really sweet romance. It is a far better movie than the source material commands or requires.

The story starts with the classified advertisement. A magazine writer finds it and pitches writing a story about it to his boss. He gets permission to take two intern, a nerdy Indian and the sarcastically depressed Darius, played by Aubrey Plaza, with him on the road trip to hunt down the weirdo.

A movie like this has two storytelling traps in it that would doom the ordinary independent movie. The first trap has to do with time travel and the fact that it ought to be impossible. At some point in the story the writer is going to have to give us a decent explanation as to what is going on there. The second is the presence of a sarcastically depressed character. These people overpopulate indie movies. They usually are underemployed artists/actors/writers/dancers who are depressed, most of the time because they aren’t famous and successful artists/actors/writers/dancers. The problem with this sort of character is that they tend to be pretentious and annoying (because seriously only a pretentious and annoying person would be depressed that they can’t be famous and successful for doing something profoundly useless like, for instance, art.) An intern for a small magazine seems to fit that mold pretty well.  

It is a credit to this movie that both of these traps are deftly averted. The main reason for this I believe is the movie’s treatment of the advertiser, a middle-aged supermarket employee named Kenneth, played by Mark Duplass. The character is one of the most weirdly endearing characters in movies. He truly believes in his mission and is sincerely looking for a partner to go back in time with him. In fact, it is revealed that he has been seeking out theoretical physicists over the Internet and engaging them in discussions about time travel. And yes, he is actually building some sort of big mechanical thing in his garden shed.

But more importantly he also happens to be shy and protective. When the magazine writer shows up at his door and asks to help, he flatly rejects him because he rightly senses that the writer doesn’t really want to go back in time. This guy may be delusional enough to believe in time travel but he can also tell when somebody is making fun of him. Darius is more sympathetic in her introduction and succeeds in gaining enough trust to start Kenneth’s brand of time travel training, but it is still a long time before he feels he can trust her enough to actually tell her the reason he is going back in time. It is a really nice reason that I am not about to spoil it here.

How the movie portrays Kenneth avoids the traps because at some point I started to not really care whether the time machine worked. And I did not care because Darius starts enjoying the sincerity and enthusiasm of the strange guy in the woods to the point where she loses much of her sarcastically depressed persona and stops caring whether the time machine works too. The story becomes more about a romance then about time travel. As far as plots go, that’s ridiculously original. What’s more ridiculous is that it really works. 

Now I can probably guess what you are thinking, and that might be that what I just described is a great cliché in romantic comedies: the oft-seen and inexplicable romance between an outlandish out-of-shape comedian and a ridiculously tolerant supermodel. Believe me this is not the case. This romance is not inexplicable. This is brought out by a superior performance with some very tricky material by Aubrey Plaza. It should be mentioned that it is never suggested that her attraction to Kenneth is a normal thing. This is even highlighted in one of the best scenes where Plaza interviews for the article a sort of ex-girlfriend of Kenneth, played by Kristen Bell, (who you may fondly remember as the ex-girlfriend in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”). She gives a totally understandable explanation of why she did not get too involved with the guy and does so without coming off as a total bitch. Instead, the attraction Darius has to Kenneth isn’t just a foretold conclusion because the screenplay necessitates that the guy has to get the girl in the end, but something that develops between two fully realized imperfect personalities that just happen to be perfect for each other. Darius has actual reasons for wanting Kenneth that make sense. It’s a pleasure to watch a comedy go through the trouble to do that every now and then.

I have yet to not be impressed by an Aubrey Plaza performance. Of course, I have only seen her in this and in her small part in “Funny People,” but I’m already at the point where I’m looking forward to seeing her in plenty of other movies. I have finally added “Parks and Recreation” to my Netflix queue.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall 06/04/08

An Apatow schlub played by Jason Segal is dumped by his longtime girlfriend Sarah Marshall and to rid himself of his grief he takes a vacation in Hawaii only to realize that his girlfriend and her new beau, a lothario rock star, are staying at the same hotel. Hilarity ensues.
This is the 1st classic movie of 2008. The best and funniest of the year so far. I noticed three quarters of the way through this film that I had stopped laughing so hard. I thought about it and realized that it wasn't because the movie had become less funny, I had simply started to feel so much for the characters. I had become invested in how the story would turn out for the people in it. There was real suspense. I cared. I sincerely wished that the nice big schlub played by newcomer Jason Segal would end up with the nice pretty girl played by Mila Kunis. The last time I had cared so much about a romance I was watching "Pride and Prejudice." I think that says alot for an alleged crass, obscene, sometimes gross-out comedy.
Not surprisingly this superior comedy was produced by Judd Apatow the most prolific creator of great comedies in our time. He has an immense talent for scouting new talent and providing them with the proper vehicles. In this movie he gives writer/star Jason Segal his first chance as a leading man and screenwriter. And he strikes the motherlode. Jason Segal, you might remember, has played bit parts in other Apatow flicks (remember him stark naked on the sidewalk after the earthquake in "Knocked Up") and was part of the original cast of the one season wonder TV show "Freaks and Geeks." Apatow had tried to get him better roles before but apparently the studios balked. I think it had something to do with marketing. How do you sell a big softie with average looks who gets his biggest laughs by writhing on the floor crying. He's an original character and as Roger Ebert pointed out, marketing research is based on what has worked. It's very tough to market something that is new and original, no matter how good. 
And how original this movie is. I think it proves one theory I've had (but unfortunately did not publish before it got proven.) That shock humor works both ways. You can get as big of laughs by being super nice as you can being super mean. It's what's unexpected that makes us laugh. So many people in this movie are likable super nice characters. The employees at the resort , Paul Rudd's stoned surfer, the newlyweds he meets (Jack McBrayer), his pediatrician (Steve Landesberg). It was a master stroke to make his girlfriend's new lover played magnificently by Russell Brand a really cool guy too. Having him not be a complete jerk adds to the complexity of the movie a ton. Even Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) isn't all bad. She gets the 3-dimensional character treatment too. (She also gets jokes, most of which are clips of the TV show she's in aptly titled 'Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime' where she plays a hard boiled detective opposite a gruff Billy Baldwin.
The nicest character though comes from a truly unexpected source. It's the resort customer service rep/love interest played by Mila Kunis in the best role she has ever had. Mila Kunis, you may remember, has specialized in playing self-absorbed idiots (That 70's Show, Family Guy). This performance is a complete departure from everything I've ever seen her do. She is smart, she is funny, and she is super sweet. She gives perhaps the best performance in a movie with a half dozen great performances and reminds me once again how plenty of good actors are stifled and stuck in bad scripts.
Rounding out the ensemble is the always hilarious Bill Hader and Jonah Hill, who I think also gives his best performance (never has he been so subtle.) The ability of this screenplay to juggle so many characters and give each of them good material is impressive. It speaks to the skill of Jason Segal as a writer and his humility as the star. The director and editor also make good choices. Notice how many funny lines are actually said offscreen. ("Dracula!") An inferior editor would probably have shown it and rendered the dialogue less funny. 
Overall this is a great production of true warmth and comedy. There certainly is alot of sex but I have never been more comfortable in saying that it wasn't exploitative or gratuitous. (Jason Segal certainly shows the most himself.) The rest of this summer's comedies have had the bar raised high. I wonder if the heavyweights Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, Mike Myers, Jack Black, Will Ferrel, Pixar, Ben Stiller, and Eddie Murphy can match the newcomer.