Safety Not Guaranteed Review

After searching around for some new movies I finally just relented to using Netflix. This ended up being the best choice I could have made. Safety Not Guaranteed is a movie I had seen in trailers and sometime on IMDB but I had all but forgotten about it. When I saw it on Netflix I had to see it. This movie put me through the gamut of emotions. It was funny, happy, sad, weird, and all the while it had quirky charm to it. It is definitely not a movie for everyone. To me, it felt like an Indie movie, and it had been lauded at Sundance.

The basis of the movie is that two interns and a full time employee at a magazine are responding to a man's ad for someone to time travel with him. They are in it for the story but things get more complicated when Aubrey Plaza's starts to fall for the man and Jake Johnson's character ignites a flame with his high-school love. The chemistry between the actors is fantastic, from the awkward pauses as a strange man spills the truth about his time traveling to the arguments between boss and intern. Each character is relatable in their own way and encompasses many people in many stages of their lives. None of them is fully relatable but all are sympathetic. Every character feels fleshed out with a back-story and they drive the plot rather than the plot driving them. For the most part this movie is funny and entertaining. It starts to tug on the heart strings at points. I thought it was a light hearted comedy and I was met with a grown man crying (not me). The director has great shots and the cinematography is beautiful. Even suburbia looks great in this movie, it draws your eyes to the best points and the colors are very vibrant. It has a fairy tale type color scheme to it and its very pleasing to the eye. I loved this movie, and every review is probably going to turn out like this but I give this movie a 4.5/5. It loved every minute of it and I thought it looked and felt great. The only category I can think this fits into is Man Vs. Himself. Each character is defeating themselves in their hearts and its their journey back into wholesomeness.