DVD Review: Michael

Thursday, July 5, 2012

DVD Review: Michael

Michael
Directed by: Markus Schleinzer.
Written by: Markus Schleinzer.
Starring: Michael Fuith (Michael), David Rauchenberger (Wolfgang), Christine Kain (Mother), Ursula Strauss (Sister), Victor Tremmel (Brother-in-law), Gisella Salcher (Christa).

There have been many movies about the banality of evil over the years – but few that take that concept so seriously as Markus Schleinzer’s Michael, which may just be the most disturbing film you will see this year. The film is a portrait of a pedophile as that bland unforgettable neighbour or co-worker that you never spare an extra thought to. To the outside world, Michael is a quiet loner. But he is also a monster, who keeps a 10 year old boy locked in his basement to use as his own personal plaything.

Written and directed by first-timer Markus Schleinzer, Michael certainly takes some lessons for his fellow countrymen – Michael Haneke. The film is cold and passes no judgment on Michael. In fact, the films cold style echoes Michael’s behavior. Whether he’s at work as, in an insurance firm (hell, at least he’s not an accountant), doing his household chores, eating his dinner or heading downstairs to his victim, his movements are precise – he values order over everything else. And Schleinzer’s visual style – long takes, slow tracking shots or no movement at all, mirrors Michael’s movements precisely. The point is to try to put us into Michael’s sick, yet ordered, mind. And it works brilliantly – which makes the movie even more disturbing than it otherwise would be.

Michael is so disturbing because it is so matter of fact about how its main character is and what he does. The movie does not go out of its way to try and shock the audience. The movie is restrained, in that it never shows us Michael molesting his young charge, although it does show the two interact. Once Michael “secures” the house, making sure no one can get or see into the house, he lets the young boy upstairs to eat dinner and watch TV. At the beginning of the movie, Michael already has the kid, and he seems respectful of Michael – not wanting to anger him. But as the movie goes along, the kid gets more and more bold. It starts in a scene where Michael quotes a line from a movie that he thinks is funny - “This is my cock, and this is my knife. Which one should I stick into you?” – and the kid doesn’t hesitate to answer – “The knife”. With the wind out of his sails, Michael sits back down in silence. As the kid gets bolder, Michael sets out to find his “replacement”.

The movie only gives us Michael’s point of view – meaning to put the audience into his head, which is a place that few audience members will want to go. And yet, it is this identification that Schleinzer forces upon the audience that makes the movie as effective as it is. Many audience members will resist – and see this movie, even without any graphic scenes, as merely exploitation. But if you go along with the movie, it becomes one of the most disturbing movie going experiences in recent memory – it doesn’t seek to forgive Michael, or condone his actions, but it does seek to make the audience squirm, and identify more closely with this sort of character than they want to. If you’re willing to go along with it, you may just find, like I did, that the movie refuses to leave you alone after its over – that you go over it again and again in your head.

 
I have a feeling some audience members are not going to be happy with the ending, which while it certainly punishes Michael, does so in a way some audiences will feel lets Michael off the hook too much. And the final shot in the movie will frustrate some who want more answers than the movie gives. Yet to me, both decisions work. Michael’s punishment is fitting, and doesn’t feel like it’s merely tacked on, but develops naturally. As for the very end, there is no possibility of a happy ending – but the director does leave it to the audience to choose between two bleak endings. Really, how else do you think a movie as disturbing as Michael to end?

Movie Review: Headhunters

Movie Review: Headhunters

Headhunters
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Written by: Lars Gudmestad  &Ulf Ryberg based on the novel by Jo Nesbø.
Starring: Aksel Hennie (Roger Brown), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Clas Greve), Synnøve Macody Lund (Diana Brown), Eivind Sander (Ove Kjikerud), Julie R. Ølgaard (Lotte), Kyrre Haugen Sydness (Jeremias Lander), Reidar Sørensen (Brede Sperre), Nils Jørgen Kaalstad (Stig).

One of the reasons why we see so few great thrillers these days is because audiences have become hard to surprise. Everyone has seen countless thrillers, and most of them hit the same plot points over and over again – and even when the plot twists, in ways in which the filmmakers feel will be shocking, they really aren’t that surprising anymore. Audiences have grown to become wary of thrillers – to mistrust them, and always be on the lookout for the next twist. In short, they have gotten good at expecting the unexpected – and figuring out a movies supposedly complex, twisted plot well before the characters in the film do. That’s what makes Headhunters such a refreshing movie – it’s that rare thriller that from one moment to the next, kept me guessing.

This Norwegian thriller stars Aksel Hennie as Roger Brown, a short man with one hell of a head of hair. He has a good job as a corporate head-hunter, but that’s not enough for him. He has a gorgeous, statuesque wife (Synnøve Macody Lund), and feels he needs to be able to give her anything she ever wanted, or she will leave him. He showers her with gifts, but refuses to give her what she really wants – a child. In order to fund this constant spending, he moonlights as an art thief. He breaks into to people’s houses when they aren’t around, replaces their masterpieces with a knockoff, and then sells them on the black market. He is an expert thief, and his plan works well. When he meets Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former Swedish soldier, who made a fortune in private security, in town to renovate his deceased grandma’s apartment, and discovers he has a long lost painting worth around $100 million, he thinks his big score has finally came in. Of course, things go horribly wrong, and Roger has to go on the run, with Clas hot on his trail. To give away anymore would be criminal.

Headhunters reminded me of two filmmakers – the first being Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock, who directed many of the greatest thrillers in movie history, also had a sense of humor running through them. He succeeded at making films that have dazzling visual set pieces, which keep you on the edge of your seat, not because of violence, but because of anticipation – wondering just what was going to happen next. There is no better example of this in a recent film than a scene where Clas tracks down Roger, and he has to hide in the last place you would want to. Director Morten Tyldum first finds the dark humor to this scene, that Hitchcock would have loved, and then ratchets it up the tension to an almost unbearable degree. The second filmmaking duo the film reminded me of is the Coen brothers, because of some of the absurdist touches the movie has – including a chase scene that would sound ridiculous if I explained it here, but somehow works.

The movie piles on the information in one scene after the next, so we’re never quite sure what is going to become useful information, and what is essentially a red herring. Right up until the finale, the movie keeps you guessing, keeps you wondering how this could possibly turn out. The ending of the movie doesn’t give Roger the finale he deserves – he is, after all, not a good guy – but the ending the audience wants for him. Despite yourself, you may just find yourself loving this art thief with a Napoleon complex. You root for this guy, and as a result, Headhunters is one of the best thrillers you will see this year.

DVD Review: God Bless America

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

DVD Review: God Bless America

God Bless America
Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait.
Written by: Bobcat Goldthwait.
Starring: Joel Murray (Frank), Tara Lynne Barr (Roxy), Mackenzie Brooke Smith (Ava), Melinda Page Hamilton (Alison), Rich McDonald (Brad), Guerrin Gardner (Crystal), Aris Alvarado (Steve Clark), Romeo Brown (John Tyler), Regan Burns (Michael Dunne), Maddie Hasson (Chloe), Larry Miller (Ben), Geoff Pierson (Mr. Parker).

Bobcat Goldthwait is angry. He is angry at all the rudeness in American society – where no one seems to respect each other. He is angry at people’s sense of entitlement, where they think they deserve everything they want the second they want it. Angry at a system that says simple acts of kindness and affection can be construed as sexual harassment. He is angry at America’s obsession with celebrity – where everyone thinks they are special, and will do anything to get on TV. Where no one cares why they are famous – even if they are famous for being awful people. Some will claim that his God Bless America it a left wing fantasy, because among Goldthwait’s targets are a Bill O’Reilly type conservative TV personality, the Tea Party, and crazy religious groups who protest the funerals of gay people. But he also takes shots at Hollywood itself – Diablo Cody for glamorizing teen pregnancy and making teenagers look like insufferable hipsters, at Woody Allen falling in love with much younger woman, and pretty much everyone who sexualizes teenage girls as if its normal. He is pissed off at everything, and in God Bless America, he lets all that anger out.

The hero of the movie is Frank (Joel Murray), a divorced middle aged man, who works for an insurance company that he hates, who has a daughter who hates him because his place is “boring”, and lives in an apartment complex with paper thin walls, next to a rude young couple with a baby who will not stop crying, who park their bright yellow mustang blocking him in every day. In the course of a day, he gets fired from his job for sending flowers to a co-worker, and finds out he has an inoperable brain tumor. He goes home that night determined to kill himself – but then he stumbles across an episode of a show obviously based on MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen, with an insufferable bitch of a teenage girl, who demands everything, who throws a hissy fit because her parents buy her a Lexus instead of an Escalade, and a father who says he is a failure because it’s his job to give his little girl everything she wants whenever she wants it. So Frank decides before he kills himself, that he is going to steal that yellow mustang, and drive to Virginia and kill that teenage girl – which he does. He is seen by Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), another teenage girl, who tracks him down and tells him he is great. That girl deserved to die. But there are so many others that also deserve to die. And so soon, this odd couple hits the road to kill those people they think deserve it. But get your mind out of the gutter; they are just “platonic spree killers”.

There is nothing subtle about God Bless America, and its satire of American culture. If anything Goldthwait hammers home his point too hard and too often over the course of the movie. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty much spot on. The first 10 minutes of the film are particularly brilliant as Goldthwait shows Frank channel surfing through a series of reality and talk shows, which are slightly exaggerated, but not by very much. God Bless America clearly takes place in an exaggerated and unrealistic world. After all, early on in the film Frank and Roxy are seen on camera, and yet there is no police who are ever really looking for them – they are allowed to crisscross the country unencumbered. But this is because Goldthwait is not making a typical “killing spree” movie, but a satire on American culture. He doesn’t have time for police.

The movie benefits greatly from its two lead performances. Joel Murray is the personification of an everyman – overweight and normal in every way – you wouldn’t notice him sitting on the bus next to him. But he has that anger in those early scenes that simmers under the surface that will not stay buried for all that long. He goes on numerous rants throughout the movie, and while in other hands, this could easily come across as pretentious, it seems genuine coming from Murray it seems genuine. As for Tara Lynne Barr, she is Murray`s equal as an angry, bored young girl, tired of her generation looking like idiots all the time.

God Bless America is perhaps the satire that American culture deserves at this moment. You probably won`t agree with all of Goldthwait`s beefs during the course of the movie – I don’t – but you cannot deny that some of what he says makes sense. It`s rare to see a movie with this much anger and rage, this much passion behind it. It is a blunt instrument of a movie – but an effective one.

DVD Review: Seeking Justice

DVD Review: Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice
Directed by: Roger Donaldson.
Written by: Todd Hickey & Robert Tannen.
Starring: Nicolas Cage (Will Gerard), January Jones (Laura Gerard), Guy Pearce (Simon), Jennifer Carpenter (Trudy), Harold Perrineau, (Jimmy), Xander Berkeley (Lieutenant Durgan), IronE Singleton (Scar), Jason Davis (Leon Walczak / Alan Marsh).

I have defended Nicolas Cage many times over the years, all the while admitting many of his movies are absolutely awful. I defend him because when he gets the right role – like Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing Out the Dead, Adaptation, Lord of War, The Weatherman, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans or even something as cheesy as Drive Angry, he delivers the kind of manic, over the top brilliant performance that no other actor can give. The problem is he gives manic, over the top performances all the time – in horrible movies, or movies in which that type of performance just doesn’t make any damn sense. But Cage, even when he’s awful or in an awful movie, is almost always at least entertaining and interesting. I’m never really bored watching a Nicolas Cage movie. But bored I was while watching Seeking Justice. Cage does what everyone else always seems to be telling him to do – dial down the manic energy. And I have to admit, I would have preferred the manic energy. At least it would have added some interest to this boring, by the numbers thriller.

Cage stars as Will Gerard, a high school teacher working with high risk kids. He is married to Laura (January Jones), a musician, who is brutally attacked and raped one night. While waiting at the hospital, he is approached by a strange man named Simon (Guy Pearce). He tells him that not only does he knows how raped his wife; he can have “taken care of” for him. All the ask in return is that they do him, and his group, a favor in return one day – nothing major, just making a phone call or dropping off a package. Of course, when he agrees to Simon’s deal, and he eventually comes calling for that favor, it’s not that simple – they want him to kill someone. And when he refuses, he becomes a target of the group himself – which of course, has a wider reach than he thought possible.

The film is directed by Roger Donaldson, who has made some good thrillers in the past – such as No Way Out, 13 Days and The Recruit. Here, he is undone by a screenplay that is simply going through the motions. The basic idea behind the film is, of course, ridiculous – but that doesn’t mean that as a movie it couldn’t have worked – most thrillers have a rather stupid plot, but they work because they help us suspend disbelief. The problem with Seeking Justice is that once it comes up with the basic plot, it never thinks of anything interesting to do with it – each twist and turn the movie takes is pretty much exactly what you would expect.

I have a feeling that everyone involved in the movie knew that it was a fairly standard thriller, and as a result everyone is going through the motions. Donaldson has been an expert at building suspense in the past, but here he doesn’t seem to try very hard. The same is true of almost everyone in the cast – especially January Jones, who the more movies I see her in, the more I suspect that she really, really cannot act. Other talented TV actors – Jennifer Carpenter, Harold Perrineau, Xander Berkeley and IronE Singleton show up in supporting roles, but are given nothing to do. For once, Cage seems to playing his role straight – after all, he is supposed to be a mild mannered teacher forced to try and prove his innocence (see, the setup could easily have made a good Hitchcock film), but weather he’s grieving, teaching, comforting, chasing or fighting, his pulse never seems to be raised. You never really buy him as an everyman. The only redeeming performance is by Pearce, who makes no attempt to try and play Simon as a realistic bad guy, but revels in his insane evil. It is the type of role, strangely, that Cage would be great in.

 
In short, Seeking Justice is a forgettable thriller, featuring a forgettable lead performance by Nicolas Cage. That in itself is a rarity – but not the good kind.

Movie Review: Magic Mike

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Movie Review: Magic Mike

Magic Mike
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh.
Written by: Reid Carolin.
Starring: Channing Tatum (Magic Mike), Matthew McConaughey (Dallas), Alex Pettyfer (Adam), Cody Horn (Brooke), Olivia Munn (Joanna), Joe Manganiello (Big Dick Richie), Matt Bomer (Ken), Adam Rodriguez (Tito), Kevin Nash (Tarzan), Gabriel Iglesias (Tobias)

Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike has been sold as a fun ride – kind of a bachelorette party of a movie. While I doubt that many women going to see the movie for the prospect of scantily clad, hot men dancing around will be disappointed by it – Magic Mike goes far beyond what the trailers are promising. The film reminded me of one of Soderbergh’s lesser seen efforts – The Girlfriend Experience – starring real life porn star Sasha Grey as a high class prostitute. Both films look at the sex industry more as a business than a source for titillation – but for what it is, a business. There is still a lot of fun to be had in the movie, and it is an interesting character study and romance as well.

The movie stars Channing Tatum, drawing from his own experience as a male stripper years ago, as Magic Mike. Mike sees himself as an entrepreneur – he runs a mobile car detailing business, along with a roofing business, and on weekends, works for Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) as a male stripper, out of a bar that Dallas rents out. Dallas has big plans – he’s going to raise enough money to open a real strip club, so they can get out of the low rent Tampa, and move to the more upscale Miami. Magic Mike is his biggest draw – and he is offering him equity in the new club. Mike does all of this because he has a bigger dream – to design costume furniture. Mike meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a 19 year old kid, recently thrown out of college because of his problems with authority, and brings him along to the club one day – where he becomes a hit. Dallas now has another star. There nights are a blur of partying, alcohol and sex – an atmosphere that Dallas encourages. Mike tries to keep things in context – something Adam cannot do, much of the chagrin of his worrying sister Brooke (Cody Horn) – who is also drawn to Mike.

You have to give Soderbergh a lot of credit for this movie – he sticks by his instincts all the way through. Soderbergh, who was recently fired from two movies (Moneyball and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) because his style clashed with what the producers wanted. While it would be easy for him to make something shallow and breezy – a sure fire audience hit (he’s done it enough in the past), Magic Mike keeps his stylistic tics, that I personally love, but has turned off some viewers from his movies. Although this is a movie that takes place in flashy clubs and on the beach, and for the first half of the movie seems like one big, long party, Soderbergh shoots the movie mainly in a dark, sepia-tone, suggesting the darkness to come in the story. Like Boogie Nights, this is a movie set in the sex industry where everything is fun and games, right up until it isn’t. It’s great to have fun when money is being made – but when something threatens that money, the fun is over.

The heart of this angle of the movie, as the sex industry as a real industry, is seen through Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Dallas – which (and I cannot believe I’m saying this) deserves consideration for a Best Supporting Actor nomination. I have often accused McConaughey’s persona, cultivated through countless, awful romantic comedies, as being shallow, and superficial. McConaughey’s performance here plays off that image brilliantly. When we first meet his Dallas, it seems like it’s going to be another of those McConaughey performance where he coasts by on his easy charm, with that slow, sexy Southern drawl of his. But watch the scene where Mike challenges him on what his equity share in the new club will be – and see how instantly Dallas changes, and that darkness comes out. He is really little more than a pimp – exploiting his “employees” for their bodies, and who will instantly discard when they lose their value (see his final scene in the movie for how quickly he can change gears in this regard). McConaughey’s performance here suggests what I have long said about him – that what he shows to the world is nothing more than a mask. He wants his “boys” to have a good time – to get drunk, get high and sleep with as many women as they can. That keeps that happy, which keeps them docile. But don’t cross him.

Channing Tatum is also wonderful in the title role. He`s having a great year so far, having a hit in the romantic drama The Vow (which remains unseen by me), and an even bigger hit with 21 Jump Street – where he proved himself to be a gifted comedic actor. Now comes the best work of his career as Magic Mike. You get the since that he was once `The Kid`, and like Adam, he bought into the whole lifestyle – and enjoyed it. But sooner or later, he realizes the emptiness of it all – and this is where the two main female roles come in. First, there is the small role played by Olivia Munn, a psychology student, who uses Mike for sex, but who Mike thinks there may be something more there. Munn eventually teaches Mike a hard lesson on how he is perceived by women. Then there is newcomer Cody Horn, as Adam`s sister, who likes Mike, but wishes he was more normal. The two have an easy chemistry together, and Horn is quite good in the role, even though it is a fairly standard one – as ``The Girl` who finally makes the hero see the light.

If all of this makes Magic Mike sound like a serious movie, it is because Magic Mike is a serious movie. Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of fun along the way – and yes, to the women who want to see Tatum and the other hot male dancers prance around the stage in next to nothing, you will not be disappointed. The dances are actually quite well choreographed and danced by the stars –who are not interchangeable hard bodies, but whose personality comes out during those dances. Unlike the female strippers I have seen in the movies, there really does seem to be a lot of thought that goes into these dances – there are more about seduction than nudity. If the movie had just been about the stripping, it may well have been a guilty pleasure for women and not much more. But it`s because Soderbergh and company take it so seriously that makes it one of the best Hollywood films of the summer so far.

Movie Review: Ted

Movie Review: Ted

Ted
Directed by: Seth MacFarlane.
Written by: Seth MacFarlane and Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg (John Bennett), Mila Kunis (Lori Collins), Seth MacFarlane (Ted), Joel McHale (Rex), Giovanni Ribisi (Donny), Patrick Warburton (Guy), Matt Walsh (Thomas), Jessica Barth (Tami-Lynn), Aedin Mincks (Robert), Bill Smitrovich (Frank), Patrick Stewart (Narrator).

I have to admit that I watch Seth MacFarlane`s Family Guy pretty much every Sunday night – and usually, I see The Cleveland Show and American Dad as well, even though neither are as consistently funny as Family Guy. When South Park did their merciless, two part masterwork `Cartoon Wars’ episode, they were not wrong about Family Guy – there is very little plot to the episodes and what bare bones there is serves only to string together a series of unrelated jokes – some of which are brilliant, some of which are horrible. At best, all three shows are little more than a guilty pleasure – nothing great, but not a horrible way to kill a half hour.  So imagine my surprise when I walked out of MacFarlane`s first feature, Ted having thoroughly enjoyed myself for nearly two hours. As strange as this will sound for a movie which as much juvenile comedy as Ted, but this is actually MacFarlane`s most mature work to date. Unlike even the best episodes of Family Guy, Ted is more than a series of isolated jokes – but actually builds comic momentum. Few comedies this year have made me laugh as much as Ted.

The movie stars Mark Wahlberg as John Bennett, another of those cases of arrested development men that the movies seem so enamored with. He is 35, works at a car rental agency and still gets high nearly every day. Somehow, he has managed to land Lori (Mila Kunis), a beautiful and successful business woman of some sort (no idea what she does, but she works in a high rise and has a nice office, so you know she`s supposed to be mature). They have been together for 4 years now – and she`s starting to think about marriage – while John doesn’t want to rush into anything. For most comedies, this setup itself would be enough. But what keeps Ted from being yet another Judd Apatow clone is the character of Ted himself. Ted is John`s childhood teddy bear, who came to life one Christmas when John wished for it. Ted has grown up alongside John all these years – and is now a profane, pot smoking, beer drinking, crude, prostitute hiring, bad influence on John. Ted is quite literally, a sign of John`s arrested adolescence – how can he possibly grow up if he`s constantly hanging out with his Teddy bear.

Fans of MacFarlane`s TV work will not be disappointed. Ted has more than enough lowbrow humor to keep them satisfied, and MacFarlane certainly takes full advantage of the freedom a R Rating gives him – which basically means this movie says the word Fuck as much as any film written by David Mamet or Quentin Tarantino and he takes his sexual and potty humor well beyond what he could get away with on Network TV. The difference between the toilet and sexual humor in Ted and in most movies is simple – it`s actually funny here (I could have done without the hooker poop scene, but then again I seem to be one of the only people who didn’t think the sight of the entire cast of Bridesmaids shitting all over the place was hysterical).

Wahlberg and Kunis do a good job in this movie, bringing at least some sort of relatable human situation to the table. Both are gifted comedic actors, and they are willing to risk looking silly for the sake of comedy – and it works. But it is Ted, voiced by MacFarlane himself that makes Ted one of the funniest comedies this year. Utilizing state of the art special effects, Ted looks just like you would expect a 27 year old teddy bear to look – a little beat up, a little dirty, yet he still has that cuteness of the best teddy bears. And it is the contradiction between how adorable Ted is, and how profane he acts, that generates a surprising amount of the humor in his character. He should be a one joke concept that doesn’t work for a whole movie – and yet, somehow, it does.

 
Ted is by no means a perfect film. Like any comedy of this sort, some jokes are hilarious, and some simply fall flat, although the ratio of hits to misses is higher than normal. And there is two unnecessary subplots – one involving Lori`s asshole boss (Joel McHale) and one involving a creepy stalker who has wanted Ted for decades (Giovanni Ribisi). Yes, McHale is great as an asshole, and Ribisi is hilariously creepy as the stalker, but it does seem like MacFarlane was trying to cram too much into one movie for its own good. Still, MacFarlane`s main goal here is to make you laugh, and for me anyway, I laughed a lot.

Movie Review: Safety Not Guarnteed

Movie Review: Safety Not Guarnteed

Safety Not Guaranteed
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow.
Written by: Derek Connolly.
Starring: Aubrey Plaza (Darius), Mark Duplass (Kenneth), Jake M. Johnson (Jeff), Karan Soni (Arnau), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Bridget), Jeff Garlin (Mr. Britt), William Hall Jr. (Shannon), Jenica Bergere (Liz), Kristen Bell (Belinda).

A very strange classified ad brings together a cynical, dour magazine intern and a romantic, perhaps crazy, idealist in the indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, a strange comedy that I liked quite a bit, but would have liked even more if it were even stranger. This is one of those movies that when they begin who cannot figure out just which way it’s going to go – and then ends up pretty much playing it straight. Yes, it’s fun and contains a few good performances. But I do kind of wish it had pushed itself further.

Aubrey Plaza, from Parks and Recreation, plays Darius, who has been in a bad mood since her mother died when she was 14 years old. She’s now out of college, interns for Seattle Magazine, but has no friends, outside her dad, no boyfriend and few prospects. She cannot even get a job as a waitress, because the manager, correctly, says she is “not a good hire” because she thinks she’s too good for this work. She catches a break when a staff reporter, Jeff (Jake Johnson, from New Girl) gets sent a classified ad from a paper down in Oceanview – that is asking for a partner to travel back in time with. The ad does work “Safety Not Guaranteed”, which I suppose is at least honest. Jeff wants to figure out who placed the ad – and do a story on the crazy guy who thinks he can travel back in time. He needs two interns – so he picks Darius, along with Arnau (Karan Soni), and off they head to Ocean View. It doesn’t take long to find out that Kenneth (Mark Duplass) placed the ad, but when Jeff strikes out on his first chance to get the inside scoop, they send in Darius – thinking that because she’s hot, Kenneth may let his guard down, and agree to take her on as his partner – which he does.

Plaza’s comic persona, which she has perfected on Parks and Recreation, serves her well as Darius, who is seemingly a cynic, but has the heart of romantic somewhere buried down deep. You can guess where the movie is going – at first, Darius sees Kenneth as a loony – wondering aloud if he’s going to cut her up and eat her, but is gradually won over by him. For his part, Duplass is so sincere, so guileless, that it’s nearly impossible not to believe him – or at least to not believe that he doesn’t believe in what he is doing. There is a nice subplot involving Johnson going back to see the girl he had a summer fling with as a teenager (Jenica Bergere), which is the type of memory that haunts many of us, and makes us wish we did have a time machine to go back and correct our mistakes.

Safety Not Guaranteed is a clever comedy – but not one that is so clever that it gets annoying. It is a pleasant movie from beginning to end. Personally, I would have preferred a more ambiguous ending that the one the movie gives us – something that would have left the audience wondering a little bit about what actually happened. Yet, that is a small complaint. Safety Not Guaranteed is not a great movie, but it is an amusing, an interesting romantic comedy.