Recommended Viewing: Safety Not Guaranteed

I grew up without cable television, which was quite the social hardship from the ages of 7-17. And now that I'm an adult, with my own my money and my own house, I still don't have cable. But don't worry, now it's my choice. In our minds we've just got better things to spend our money on. But that doesn't mean I don't like to watch television series or movies, not at all, I can couch potato with the best of them. Instead we use our X-Box to stream Netflix and Hulu, and it's perfect for us. Instant Netflix has a great selection of movies but sometimes it's hard to sift through all the titles. That's why I'd like to share when we find something we particularly like.

Safety Not Guaranteed:

I think we initially chose this movie because it stars Aubrey Plaza. The girl who is insistently grumpy and sarcastic in all her roles, but in an endearing likeable way. Plaza plays a twentysomething, Darius, interning at a Seattle-based magazine; and doesn't seem to be happy with her life, or what she's doing with it. She gets assigned to cover a story of a man who continually runs an ad in the paper for someone to go back in time with him. Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

Darius and staff writer Jeff, played by Jake Johnson, from "New Girl", trek to a small seaside town to investigate what kind of person thinks they can go back in time. Is he serious, or is he just a lunatic? After some snooping they find the home of Kenneth, Mark Duplass, from "The League". When Jeff's journalistic aggression scares Kenneth off, Darius is charged with using her "feminine wiles" to their advantage, pretending that she is applying to his ad to be his traveling companion. As Kenneth trains her for their time travel, Darius begins to connect with another person for the first time in her adult life...

Don't worry, no spoilers here. We both thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was humorous, but in a subdued indie sort of way. It was heartfelt at times, but I didn't cry. I liked how I was actually unsure how everything would pan out. I didn't know until the very end whether Kenneth truly had a time machine or he was just a paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist. The relationship of Darius and Kenneth is really sweet, especially at a point when Kenneth sings a song (written for another girl) on his zither by their campsite fire. We suspect that Duplass is actually playing, so bonus points. There's also a few subplots about Jeff reconnecting with a girlfriend from his past that don't detract from the overall movie flow. Overall four stars from us.

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