The Mediocre Jurassic World And The Very Good Safety Not Guaranteed

Last week it was reported that Jurassic World, the sequel slash reboot directed by Colin Treverow, is now the third highest grossing film of all time. At more than 1 and a half billion dollars worldwide so far, it’s right behind James Cameron’s Avatar at number one and James Cameron’s Titanic at number two. We can glean several important things from this information. First of all, we can assume that James Cameron probably sleeps in pajamas made of thousand dollar bills and unicorn fur. But beyond that, Jurassic World’s success tells us a couple of things: when it comes to summer movies, we don’t care all that much if the story is original, if the characters seem like real people or do things that “make sense.”  We just really like spectacle. Realistic characters? Meh. Giant super dinosaurs eating those unrealistic characters? Yes, please. 

The other observation we can make is that even though Hollywood is notoriously risk-averse, producers and studios will occasionally take a chance. Colin Treverow, the co-writer and director of Jurassic World, had directed exactly one movie before being tapped for the dinosaur bonanza. 2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed had no real stars, a budget of 750 thousand dollars, and only made four million dollars worldwide. Sure, that’s more than 500 % profit, but it still makes you wonder what made Hollywood producers look at his quirky, melancholy, lo-tech sci-fi romance and say, “Now there’s a man who can handle a ton of CGI dinosaurs and a budget bigger than the GDP of Ecudaor.”

 Safety Not Guaranteed stars Aubrey Plaza as Darius Britt, a twenty something drone at a Seattle area magazine who drifts through life unattached and unaffected, still dealing with grief from her mother’s death. She volunteers to help a reporter with his story investigating a mysterious personal ad that reads: 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.”

What follows is a combination of a meet-cute romance, paranoid spy fantasy, coming-of-age drama, and a meditation on how grief can fuel our desire to change the past. Darius and her colleagues track down Kenneth, the man who placed the ad. He’s a stock clerk at a grocery store and is the kind of character who veers back and forth between being quirkily endearing and unsettlingly paranoid. After the reporter turns off Kennneth with his smirky disbelief, Darius makes contact and volunteers to be his time traveling companion. She tells her reporter colleague that it’s just for the story, but Aubrey Plaza’s unique combination of scalding sarcasm and tightly guarded vulnerability make it clear she’s conflicted. She doesn’t know whether to try to have Kenneth committed or fall in love with him. The two train for their dangerous mission, steal parts for his time machine, and confess their reasons for why they would want to back in time in the first place. 

The movie suggests that we all have moments and relationships that we want to revisit, either to keep them from ever happening or to relive them more fully than the first time. Rather than dwelling on the usual time travel movie clichés like paradoxes and flashy special effects, Safety Not Guaranteed gives us a melancholy rumination on regret, grief, and how we sometimes refashion our present to compensate for our past.

I’m not sure what about that made a Hollywood producer say, Colin Treverow should make a movie about a pack of trained velociraptors, but he did. Jurassic World is a mediocre film that made a ton of money. Safety Not Guaranteed is a good movie that made almost none. If you’re a little weary of summer spectacle and want something more thoughtful and less dinosaur-sized, you should give it a try. 

Double Indemnity

One thing I love about film noir is its unrepentant darkness. It takes nerve to tell a story about bad people doing bad things and not leaven it with anything as trite as a happy ending. In film noir, the bad guys are as dark and wormy as the underside of a river rock, the women are sexy and cold with cash register hearts, and the good guys, if there are any, are conflicted, dangerous, and morally ambiguous to say the least. And no one is sorry for any of it. In our day of increased sensitivity and thoughtfulness, it’s refreshing to dip a toe into these stylish, violent stories of unleashed greed, lust, and ambition.

One of the earliest noir films is also one of the best – 1944’s Double Indemnity. Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson, Double Indemnity is the story of Walter Neff, an upstanding insurance agent and Phyllis Deitrichson, the sweet, loyal wife of one of Neff’s clients. Except Neff is not upstanding and Phyllis is anything but sweet and loyal. The two begin an affair and then conspire to kill her husband so they can collect his life insurance. Specifically, if Mr. Dietrichson happens to die in an accident on a train, then the double indemnity clause of his policy comes into play and the payout is doubled. So Walter and Phyllis tryst in secret and try to figure out how to get the old man to croak on a train. These are not nice people.

 

The scene where Neff and Phyllis first meet is one of the best and most memorable in American movies. Walter drops by the Dietrichson house to renew a policy and finds Phyllis at home alone wrapped only in a towel having just come in from sunbathing. Their flirtatious, rough-edged banter written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler has the two characters testing one another to see who might be up for an affair and who might be up for murder. The dialogue in that scene is pure noir – it’s smart, sexy, and dangerous - and it’s deliriously fun to watch these two seemingly normal characters begin their mutual downward spiral into darkness.

That scene is one of several from the film that have been imitated, paid homage to, and just plain ripped off repeatedly in the 70 plus years since its release. You may not have seen Double Indemnity itself, but it’s a sure bet that you’ve seen something inspired by it. 

 

Much of the film’s power comes from its two leads – MacMurray, who later went on to be a squeaky clean TV dad on My Three Sons, looks like a really decent guy but had the acting chops to reveal a man rotten from within. Stanwyck is like a cold glass of water on hot day – provided the water is laced with cyanide. She’s acidic, sexy, and unhinged. We know from the beginning that she’s trouble, but like Neff, we can’t stay away.

 

The climax of Double Indemnity takes place in an almost pitch black room as Walter and Phyllis confront each other over their various betrayals. It’s an appropriate visual metaphor for film noir in general – a hapless, corrupt man and a powerful, cold woman sniping at each other in the dark, both of them aiming for the heart. It’s the same room where the two first met, where they had both come in from the sun before beginning their unapologetic descent into darkness together.

If you haven’t seen Double Indemnity, you should. Park the minivan, take a break from your upstanding life and hang out with liars, cheaters, con artists, and thugs for a while. Say hello to Phyllis while you’re there. You’ll be surprised how much fun you’ll have.

This review originally appeared on Q90.1 Delta College Quality Public Radio. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org. 

Minions

When the first Despicable Me movie came out in 2010, the best things about it were Steve Carrell’s whacked-out Transylvanian-on-steroids accent, the zippy retro 50s design of the secret lairs and freeze rays, and, of course, the Minions, the gibbering, yellow little spuds in goggles and overalls who worked for Gru, the super-villain intent on stealing the moon. Naturally because of their popularity, when the sequel came out, the Minions had a much more prominent role in both the story and in the marketing campaign. Now as a part of this logical progression, the Minions have eclipsed the supervillain they work for and are no longer playing second banana, so to speak, in their very own spinoff movie.  Minions is a prequel to the Despicable Me movies and is the origin story of the seemingly endless band of chattering, banana-colored henchmen.

Let’s not think about it too hard, but apparently, the Minions are an ancient race of immortal, more or less indestructible beings who are naturally drawn to serve whoever or whatever is the biggest, baddest villain around. Prehistoric minions ride along with a t-rex as it terrorizes other, smaller dinosaurs. Cave Minions work to entertain the Abominable Snowman. French Minions serve Napoleon as he tries to dominate Europe. You get the idea. 

After accidentally shooting Napoleon with a cannon, the Minions go through a dry spell and don’t have a decent villain to serve. Because their purpose in life is to assist in evil plots, they become listless and bored. So the heart of the story is the tale of three Minion pals who venture out to find a new big bad boss for their tribe. They travel to 1960s era London after they get a job working for Scarlett Overkill, a supervillain with a bouffant hairdo and a high tech dress that transforms into everything from a bomb shelter to a rocket ship. 

The Minions' job is to steal Queen Elizabeth’s crown because Overkill has wanted to be a princess with a crown ever since she was a little girl. This goes along with the Despicable Me films’ thesis that all villains are simply softies motivated by bad childhood memories.   The London setting ends up being one of the film’s most reliable sources for jokes even if they’re not terribly original. Everyone drinks tea, including cops in the middle of a high speed chase, and Queen Elizabeth herself gets mixed up on a full-on brawl with the Minions and delivers a Randy the Macho Man Savage flying elbow to one of our trio of little protagonists. One of the Minions becomes the King of England for eight hours. It’s all ridiculous but entertainingly so.

The voice work is pretty standard. Sandra Bullock does fine as Scarlett Overkill but her practical, girl-next-door charm fails to give the villain any real oomph. Jon Hamm does a better job as Herb, Scarlett’s groovy inventor husband. As an actor, Hamm has never shied away from totally going for it and that abandon comes through somewhat here.

With their spongy, yellow bodies, the Minions have always reminded me a little of Hostess Twinkies, and I think that may be an appropriate simile for the entire movie. The Minions movie is like a Twinkie – not very substantial, enjoyable while it lasts but not terribly memorable, nourishing, or distinguishable from hundreds of others just like it. Minions is fun and will make your kid giggle. It won’t totally bore you if you take your family to see it to escape the summer heat, but it might leave you hungry for something more substantial and memorable later.