Safety Not Guaranteed

A magazine team goes after a strange classified ad: someone is looking for a companion for time travel. Intern Darius makes contact, and whether the man is delusional or right stays open until the last minute. The ad was real. It ran in Backwoods Home Magazine in 1997 and was written as a joke by the magazine's senior editor John Silveira to fill space. It read: wanted, someone to go back in time with me, this is not a joke, safety not guaranteed, I have only done this once before. It became unexpectedly famous and drew thousands of replies. It is Colin Trevorrow's first feature, with Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass. Made for 750,000 dollars, it grossed 4.4 million. It premiered at Sundance in 2012 where screenwriter Derek Connolly won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 91 percent. The door it opened for Trevorrow was Jurassic World. A musical adaptation was staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2024. Who it is for: viewers who like small, odd, sincere independent comedy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting science fiction. This is almost entirely character work with the genre element held in suspense until the end.