Popular reviews

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 30

  Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.1

  Have you ever completely fallen for a film? For no other reason than that it provided you with a perfect bubble of escapism wrapped in a blanket of charm and warmth?

  This is what this film is to me and I hadn't expected it at all.

  From the opening monologue I feared the worst. A twentysomething girl rattling existentialist quips at double speed while looking bored with life and the universe. I feared the dreaded 'indy quirk' that I just can't stand. And while this film is definitely quirky, it is not what it is about. It's about life, regret, the past, the future, love and, yes, time travel.

  In this gem of…

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  Review by PTAbro ★ 16

  There is a moment in Safety Not Guaranteed where Aubrey Plaza's quirky character asks Mark Duplass' even quirkier character, "Is that a guitar?" while sitting in front of a campfire after a romantic day of mutual quirkiness. Jaw agape, knowing exactly what was about to happen, I had to pause the movie and consider whether everything up to this point had been trying to make some kind of ironic statement about the romcom genre. Sadly, by the end, I realized it was meant as a genuine moment.

  Safety Not Guaranteed deserves the tiniest bit of credit for trying to shoehorn some superficially sci-fi elements into an otherwise mind-numbingly cookie-cutter romcom plot, and there were moments of promise in the subplot…

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★ 11

  The perfect example of the indie calling-card movie: Looks great, quirky as hell, totally useless. Aubrey Plaza does what she can, but there's just no weight to any of these "time travel" shenanigans at all, even as metaphor. I really hope digital filmmaking gets cheap enough to where aspiring Hollywood directors can sends movies like this straight to studio executives. It feels like the audience is witnessing a transaction.

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  Review by k.

  nooo aubrey plaza dont fall in love with a man wtf

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  Review by hailey 🌼 ★★★ 3

  just wanna hang out with jake johnson and aubrey plaza...not asking for much here

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★ 8

  it's been pretty obvious for a long time now that studio execs are on the prowl for hot new indie directors with a sundance hit under their belt to hand the keys of a giant franchise to simply 1) prove that their up to date with new trends and talents 2) have someone untrained in the process in the big seat that they can push around with ease. in most of those breakout films however you can kind of see a sliver of the filmmaker about to be beaten to a pulp until they part ways on the 2nd or 3rd movie over "creative differences" and return to a more modest scale, this is just a flavorless nothing of a…

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  Review by Jay ★★★★

  What a tight, magical 85 minutes that turned out to be nothing like I was expecting. I think I have a tiny crush on Mark Duplass, which is weird to admit after having sat through both Creep films. He just brings so much convincing energy to that outsider type character; he's geeky and erratic but has a sort-of rugged charm. And he can play the ZITHER!

  I love that in the short runtime, the film was able to cover so much groundwork thematically. It manages to effectively address self-confidence, self-acceptance, mental illness, childhood trauma and unlikely kindred spirits. Each of its characters were given room to learn and grow, just like the story itself, each unlikely turn morphing it into…

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  Review by kayla ★★½

  Why does Mark Duplass work a mullet

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★ 1

  "What's your story about?" - Cop,
  "The story?..... I don't know anymore." - Jeff,

  Time.

  This is a weird story that meanders quite a bit, with subplots that don't really finish and have trouble connecting to the central focus of the film. The description makes it seem like a streamlined story about meeting a man who thinks he can time travel but it's so much more. It's really just a story about people trying to find happiness and meaning in life and the barriers they come to along the way...but with time travel talk.

  I liked it. While it's hard to compete with Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass I also enjoyed the stuff with Jake Johnson and Karan Soni. The film has a free flowing feel that I enjoyed and I like that it leans into the weirdness. It's a cute love story for losers and I generally appreciate those.

  Yeah.

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  Review by Peaceful Stoner ★★★★ 12

  What would you go back for?

  The film stays true to its tagline even though its title is a largely a detractor. I was expecting a sci-fi adventure and got a neat, cute little surprise. It is a very dangerous thing when a film does not deliver its titular promise because the viewer would then be doubly disappointed. One, of course, would be because the film was not what he or she thought it would be and two, the film was not good in what it tried to be eventually. But that is where I was bowled over by this film. I never expected to see a romantic comedy filled with adorable characters and how their lives and thoughts change…

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  Review by Blake Bergman "Various Spaghetti" ★★★½

  "Safety Not Guaranteed" is 2012 independent film that centers around the element of potential time travel. As director Colin Trevorrow would go on to make bigger films like two of the "Jurassic World" (2015, 2022) films, you can the beginning influence of his style that translated into those films later on. This film felt to be a smaller scale adventure tone that intermixed themes of romance, drama and comedy, really as a testing ground to see if he could move up the ladder to make things on larger scale. Love or hate the "Jurassic World" integrations that he was a part of you can see some of the trends in energy in "Safety Not Guaranteed", a film that is charming…

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  Review by Simone ★★★★★ 8

  I watch a ton of bad indie comedies so that occasionally I'll stumble upon little gems like Safety Not Guaranteed. I love the philosophy and science behind time travel. I also love what the ability to time travel tends to reveal about characters, as well as how it fundamentally changes their views on life. The human drama in Safety Not Guaranteed is realistic and poignant, with a few flashes of silly humor and tired clichés. However, the negatives are barely noticeable under the shiny outlook on life this film reveals and the almost unbearably likable characters. I had a smile plastered on my face for the entire runtime and found myself wanting to watch it all again right away.

  The…