Safety Not Guaranteed

Safety Not Guaranteed takes its inspiration from a fake ad placed in Backwoods Home magazine back in 1997 which read: “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box ... You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.” Here the same ad becomes fodder for a Seattle alternative paper reporter named Jeff who suffers from a bit of egoism. For the investigation he takes a couple interns along with him. Arnau is a socially-awkward nerd while Darius is a beautiful young woman who is also a smartass with a droll sense of humor. The movie actually opens with her epic fail at a job interview followed by a scene at home with her widowed father.

The trio drive to a town called Oceanview which not coincidentally is also the home of one of Jeff’s old flames. While he is off trying to get a piece of ass, Darius and Arnau stake out the post office and eventually watch a man check the P.O. box in the ad. He turns out to be Kenneth, a rather odd duck who works in the local supermarket. After finding out where he lives, Jeff goes to Kenneth’s house pretending to answer the ad but the time traveler sees through his ruse and sends Jeff packing. Plan B is to have Darius approach him. She does so while Kenneth at work with her wiles and a tough guy act. She is in.

One big problem here. Kenneth is paranoid that someone, perhaps the government, is watching him. He places an ad with only a P.O. box in it yet he seems remarkably nonplussed when people show up at his place of employment and his home saying they were answering the ad. This plot hole is only enlarged later in the film at times when Kenneth is convinced that the voyeurs are near and he becomes absolutely manic and flees.

Setting this aside, Darius slowly earns Kenneth’s trust and trains for the mission while Arnau presumably sits in the hotel room and surfs the Net. For his part, Jeff seeks out his ex-girlfriend, Liz. She is a divorced hairdresser who lives a rather bucolic lifestyle out in the country where she raises chickens. Liz unwittingly seduces him with her home cooked meals and multiple varieties of pie. Elsewhere Darius falls for Kenneth. Although he’s a bit off kilter, he is friendly and earnest in his time travel endeavor which he reveals to be a mission to save a lost love.

Neither of these relationships pan out. Having failed with Liz, Jeff decides to teach Arnau a hedonistic lesson on the meaning of tempus fugit with a group of young women picked up at a gas station. Darius discovers the truth about Kenneth and confronts him with it. Their relationship is riven but Darius decides that she doesn’t want to walk away. I won’t spoil the ending but will say that it managed to provide some closure while also being wonderfully ambiguous.

The title of the movie refers not only to the potential perils of time travel but also to those of opening oneself up emotionally to another person. There’s a nice contrast here between Jeff and Darius. Jeff does so but flees immediately while Darius takes a risk. While a nice sentiment, it didn’t translate for me because, of the main characters, only Kenneth was interesting. Arnau is simply wallpaper. He doesn’t do much except look exasperated and suffer Jeff’s treatment of him. Jeff is mostly defined by his puerile comments and adolescent attitudes. And Darius is just all sarcasm. Some of this was funny but was one-note for too much of the time.

I think that this initial disappointment with the characters makes it difficult for me to accept their transformations because I feel really ambivalent about how things pan out. On one hand I think the shift from light-hearted comedy to love story was pulled off well. But there’s also something nagging at me that says it was too quick and that the ending was in some way trite and too much like a fairy tale. Darius and Kenneth’s relationship reminded me of Jack and Parry in The Fisher King with two damaged people looking to be fixed. But our characters here find healing with too few trials and tribulations for it to be satisfying for me.

Still, there is fun to be had in Safety Not Guaranteed and I give the creators credit for not letting the idea of time travel get in the way of focusing on characters.