Wanted: Someone 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. I have only done this once before.
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED
This is an actual advert in a newspaper that was turned into an internet meme some time ago. Writer Derek Connolly adapted this into a feature length comedy about an intern at a magazine whose boss decides that it will make for a ridiculous story whilst at the same time give him a chance to meet an old flair he used to have that still lives in the area. It's an amusing plot with fine performances and it almost works considering some major flaws.
Aubrey Plaza hilariously stars as Darius, a chronic pessimist who can't find a job due to her frankness and inability to work with others. She works tirelessly and fruitlessly interning for her schmuck of a boss, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson), and seeks the chance to actually do something productive. Jeff takes Darius and another intern, Arnau (Karan Soni), from Seattle to Ocean Shores, WA on a wild goose chase to track down the nutter who placed the add.
This man turns out to be Kenneth, played by Mark Duplass in what is easily his best performance to date. There is nothing forced about his craziness; it is done with such conviction that we cannot help but be won over by him. This is the kind of man who never grew out of action figures and make believe. He is the sort of person who would collect samurai swords and know his name in Elvish. He sees conspiracies all around him and fully believes that he is constructing a time machine.
When Jeff approaches Kenneth too forcefully pretending to be interested in the project, Kenneth is frightened off and Darius is left with the task of winning him over. In a fantastically funny scene Darius plays to his insanity using sexual charm and talk of SMG's and maces to intrigue Kenneth to take her on as a partner. It doesn't go so smoothly and the audience realizes that this is not going to be a time travel film, but rather a film about the bond created by two outsiders.
They go through basic training and some ridiculous antics collecting parts for the machine at the same time strengthening a friendship doomed from the start. Watching this affection grow makes some inevitable outcomes all the more difficult to watch. The two have chemistry and their scenes together are far more interesting than those revolving around around Jeff and his romance subplot, and the scenes with Jeff and Arnau where he tries desperately to get his gaming, bespectacled, scrawny, Indian intern laid for the first time. The scenes are cute, but distracting and irrelevant.
There are many lovely moments in this film including a very deep moment in Kenneth's car where the two friends improv wonderfully dramatic dialogue with each other about why they are going back in time. These scenes, however, are cheapened by a campy cat-and-mouse chase sequence at the end and, in my opinion, a completely unfounded kiss. I wrote in my notes early on that I hoped there would not be a romantic element thrown in between Darius and Kenneth--Kenneth is far older than she is--but there was and the moment was extremely uncomfortably to watch. There was no tongue and cheek or even a mention of the age difference as in some films like "Harold and Maude." How the film played out ruined the fun of the first two acts.
This is a good little film for a first date maybe. It borrows from the style of other Sundance comedies like "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Little Miss Sunshine," though it isn't nearly as creative as those. It is funny--at times very funny, but director Colin Trevorrow was too bogged down with ideas. Sometimes simplicity is the name of the game and I hope that that's a lesson he learns. I talked with him a bit after the screening and he did make one significant change to the script which I thought was very smart. It's the ending, which I won't describe, but watch it and you will recognize that it can go one of two ways. It was the other way first and that would have been a far weaker ending (though it was with that ending that the movie was accepted into the Sundance, funny enough). At least in that sense he brought the mood of the film back to where it needed to be.
2.5/4
*Note: The original writer of the advert was in the film. Watch it and I will tell you who it is.
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