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Safety Not Guaranteed
Sep. 28th, 2012 12:22 pmDisney recently screened Safety Not Guaranteed as part of its employee screening series, the second odd little indie flick I've managed to catch this year. I'd actually been looking forward to this one for a while: Completely at random, the one time I visited Pixar, I met the guy who wrote it; I hadn't seen it at that point so I couldn't congratulate him on doing an amazing job, but if I were to meet him again, I would make sure to do so.
All I knew about the movie going into it was that it was based on this newspaper ad, which did the rounds on the internet a few years ago:
Naturally, my assumption was that it would be an action-adventure type movie about the ad placer and the ad answerer travelling in time and fighting dinosaurs with steampunk rayguns and stuff.
It wasn't. But instead of being disappointed, I ended up immensely pleased, because it kept defying my expectations, not just by rejecting my initial assumptions, but by setting up further assumptions and then deliberately, but often brilliantly, not following through on them. I can't count the number of times I thought "oh, it's going to be this kind of situation/character/trope/movie" and then within five minutes had to recalculate.
In light of that, the less I tell you about the movie the more you will probably enjoy it. It is about the guy who placed the ad, and the people who try to answer it but – stoppit, you're already expecting something, see? Just go, and go with it; you're in good hands, you can trust them to entertain you. The actors are really good, the director and everyone else do their jobs with aplomb, and as a bonus you get some gorgeous temperate rainforest to play in.
There are only two negative things I have to say about the film, and both are highly trivial:
1. Occasionally there's an interior shot with artificial lighting which led me to believe it was nighttime when it turned out to be daytime, or vice versa;
2. This is an independent film so the effects budget is not what it could be; effects are very sparing anyway but there are a couple that ... are not ... quite what they could be. But by the time they happen the movie is carrying you well enough they don't really matter.
This isn't really a negative comment, but it did make me think about stories and storytelling and characters' backstories and motivations ... I know it's very powerful to give a character a tragic backstory, but you don't need a dark past to be driven to pursue something. Case in point:
All I knew about the movie going into it was that it was based on this newspaper ad, which did the rounds on the internet a few years ago:
Naturally, my assumption was that it would be an action-adventure type movie about the ad placer and the ad answerer travelling in time and fighting dinosaurs with steampunk rayguns and stuff.
It wasn't. But instead of being disappointed, I ended up immensely pleased, because it kept defying my expectations, not just by rejecting my initial assumptions, but by setting up further assumptions and then deliberately, but often brilliantly, not following through on them. I can't count the number of times I thought "oh, it's going to be this kind of situation/character/trope/movie" and then within five minutes had to recalculate.
In light of that, the less I tell you about the movie the more you will probably enjoy it. It is about the guy who placed the ad, and the people who try to answer it but – stoppit, you're already expecting something, see? Just go, and go with it; you're in good hands, you can trust them to entertain you. The actors are really good, the director and everyone else do their jobs with aplomb, and as a bonus you get some gorgeous temperate rainforest to play in.
There are only two negative things I have to say about the film, and both are highly trivial:
1. Occasionally there's an interior shot with artificial lighting which led me to believe it was nighttime when it turned out to be daytime, or vice versa;
2. This is an independent film so the effects budget is not what it could be; effects are very sparing anyway but there are a couple that ... are not ... quite what they could be. But by the time they happen the movie is carrying you well enough they don't really matter.
This isn't really a negative comment, but it did make me think about stories and storytelling and characters' backstories and motivations ... I know it's very powerful to give a character a tragic backstory, but you don't need a dark past to be driven to pursue something. Case in point:
