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88Safety Not Guaranteed not only has dialogue that's about something, but characters who have some depth and dimension.
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75For the most part, Safety Not Guaranteed is a pleasant viewing experience, but there is a flaw. While Darius is bonding with Kenneth, Jeff is reconnecting with his past. This subplot goes nowhere.
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75Safety Not Guaranteed is a fable of ''redemption,'' and it's too tidy by half, but it is also very sweetly told.
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75Director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly keep the film humming with funny and touching surprises. And Plaza is a flat-out enchantress.
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75It's brisk and assured and never begs the audience's indulgence. No time is wasted. The movie is, at every moment, either funny or pushing the story forward, or both.
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80Delightful proof that money and fame have nothing on ingenuity and wit, Safety Not Guaranteed is worth a million meaningless blockbusters.
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70That time machine - a wonderful-looking gizmo with some lasers stolen from a medical laboratory - really exists. Whether it works or not, you'll have to see for yourself. It's worth the wait.
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75The final scenes deliver a payoff worthy of the film's scrappy optimism, but that may not be the reason you walk out of the theater on a cloud. It's the sight of a character coming rapturously into her own at the same time as the actress playing her.
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67I found myself falling for it, hard. It's Trevorrow's feature debut and we'd like to see more, please.
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100It's equally endearing as a sweetly funny romance between two likable oddballs and as a low-tech time-travel thriller, and has something profound to say about making the most of the present.
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75It's about time: Aubrey Plaza gets her own movie!
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75Call me biased, but I'm quick to put out the welcome mat for any movie – good, bad or indifferent – that resists easy categorizing. That's certainly the charm of Safety NotGuaranteed, which flirts with two very different genres yet never goes steady with either.
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75You may buy the ending or not. The filmmakers certainly do, which helps. And the film is modest but skillful and heartfelt, spiced just so by Plaza and company.
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75The main flaw is that, as an actor, Duplass isn't able to make the audience love him. Picture "Bottle Rocket"-era Owen Wilson in the role, and you've got something special.
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75As happens with many time-travel films, this one ultimately paints itself into a bit of a narrative corner.
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63Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.
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60Safety Not Guaranteed doesn't quite know what kind of comedy it wants to be; the humor works best in its first hour, when the news-of-the-weird plot takes on a suggestive dimension of romantic desperation.
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80Even if something feels crazy -- whether it's falling in with a self-taught time-traveler, or buying into a charming but faintly flawed movie premise -- if you listen to your gut, wonderful things can happen.
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80This is the rare movie with no one to root against, a film filled with good guys and weird guys (and gals), all of whom you hope find what they're looking for, even if you know that's not possible.
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67The movie shifts awkwardly from slapstick firearms training sessions to tender campfire kisses to straightforward suspense (who are those mysterious trench-coated figures?). Combined with unconvincing behavior from all of its characters, that's enough to leave this a disappointing realization of a potentially fascinating idea.
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80Develops into an endearingly scrappy and romantic romp that serves up some nice soul-searching moments alongside a steady stream of laughs.
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70Touching, generous, sweet, this little slip of a movie puts you under some kind of spell.
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80Aubrey Plaza proves she can carry a film with this multiplex-friendly comedy about time travel.
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60I was onboard with the gentle charm of Safety Not Guaranteed until these last few scenes, when the genuine trauma suffered by these characters - especially Kenneth, whose paranoia and isolationism seem like symptoms of real mental illness - gets glossed over in an unconvincingly Spielbergian happy ending.
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75It's a tribute to Plaza and Duplass that they're able to make such slight material resonate at all, let alone with the poignancy they occasionally find.
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75More focused on emotion than adventure, it teases out the possibilities and perils of time travel without embroiling itself in the confusion inherent to the subject.
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Jun 14, 201260Where the narrative and characterization work, the visuals are lacking. Director Colin Trevorrow's digital cinematography occasionally resembles a YouTube video in mid-buffer, making the gorgeous and picturesque setting of the Pacific Northwest coastline appear bland and texture-less.
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Jun 11, 201280The real revelation here is Plaza, whose shtick - the willowy cutie deadpanning about how lousy her life is - should be grating and tired, but it works remarkably well for some reason.
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Jun 7, 201270Safety Not Guaranteed is permeated with that aura of unfocused melancholy common to so many indies these days -- what are we all so damn sad about? -- but by tying it back to characters that don't seem popped from any too-familiar mold, the film allows its sense of regret, its alarm at time passing, to feel earned.
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Jun 5, 201270A viewer's patience with some of Safety's more rote stretches is rewarded in the film's final 15 minutes, when the plot takes a truly unexpected turn. As a DIY answer to the Spielberg generation's nostalgia for movie magic, the film's fully earnest, fantastic climax beats something like "Super 8" at its own game for a fraction of the cost.
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Jun 5, 201250Not sure if you'll enjoy Safety Not Guaranteed? Here's a quick litmus test: how do you feel about watching Mark Duplass, accompanying himself on zither (!), singing a heartfelt song about how "everyone in the big machine tries to break your heart?"