Release date: June 8, 2012 (ltd.)
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Written by: Derek Connolly
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson
These days, it seems the faster we hurtle forward, the more severe the whiplash if we chance to glance backward. If we could not only look back, but get back, there may be some do-overs that we wouldn’t need to carry out … because we did it right the first time.
Playing on the concept of wishful reconfiguring, filmmakers Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly of Safety Not Guaranteed used a 1997 classified ad from Oregon’s Backwoods Home Magazine to inspire them: “WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke … You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.” It turns out that the ad wasn’t generated by some crackpot, but by the magazine’s senior editor John Silveira, whose publisher asked him to write a few fillers “when the classified ad pages came up short.” (Imagine that problem happening today, given the easy bits and bytes of virtual formatting.) During the Q&A period directly after the film’s packed screening at Sundance’s Eccles Theater last January, Silveira was asked to identify himself. And the sixtyish fellow, sporting a fuzzy grey beard and a red flannel shirt, jubilantly jumped up and waved to his fellow audience members.
But like an old yellow Datsun speeding away from suspicious G-men … I’m getting ahead of myself.
[For the full review on doddle and Kimberly Gadette's out-of-this world rating, please click here]