Safety Not Guaranteed
Okay, the first trick to get me to watch a romantic comedy is to put Aubrey Plaza in it. There is just something so shy and sheepish (yet also with a streak of “I could stab you at any time”) about her that just grabs my attention. That is step one. Step two, make your film about a strange man who may or may not potentially know how to time travel. Bam. You have two steps in the right direction. Third, make your cast wounded. No one is without baggage, and I hate romantic comedies that try to tell you otherwise. We all have our issues. We are all fucked up in one way or another. Safety Not Guaranteed knows this, and it gives us a cast of characters who actually have, GASP, issues.
It also is another film that earned its place on the list by being a hidden romantic comedy. You don’t necessarily get that from the trailer or from the premise (which is based on a real ad, by the way). The long and short is, Aubrey Plaza plays a journalist who decides to answer an ad in the paper seeking someone for a time travel journey. She meets the man, and the two begin to discuss their plan. Over time, we see that they are more alike (and more fucked up) than we thought at first, and it is this fact that sort of brings them together. There is also a subplot about rekindling an old high school flame that is handled quite honestly, too.
Oh, and that f*cking ending. So good.
