I have a love/hate relationship with indie movies. Good indie movies remind audiences of the inherent craft of filmmaking and the emotions a great original story can elicit. Bad indie movies, on the other hand, only serve to extend the stereotypes associated with "indie" things – mainly, pretension.

Walking into "Safety Not Guaranteed," it's easy to assume you're about to be confronted with the latter. The movie takes Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a loner with a dogged insistence that he can travel back in time, and pairs him up with Darius (Aubrey Plaza), a disaffected 20something girl with a penchant for snark. Darius ends up becoming Kenneth's protege, but is actually on an undercover mission – along with an "Odd Couple"-style pair of foils (Jake M. Johnson and Karan Soni) – to investigate him for a magazine article.

It's a lot of weird, I know. But despite all that, it manages to steer clear of becoming a full-on time-traveling quirkfest.

Just to be clear, "Safety" is quirky. It's not, however, obnoxiously so, and you can credit good dialogue and good casting for that. The characters are weird (not too hard to figure out given the descriptions above), but there's nothing lofty or romantic about their weirdness, and the script doesn't write this duo onto a pedestal of counterculture glory.

In fact, the characters do such a good job of getting you invested in their own personal dysfunctions that it's easy to overlook the fact that two-thirds of the movie has practically nothing to do with time travel. Granted, it would have probably crashed and burned if it had tried to seriously traverse the sci-fi route, but there's nothing shoddy or lazy in this alternative direction. Choosing to base the story in the prep work stage helped keep the plot grounded and relatable, as well as spotlight what is ultimately a simple-yet-sensitive, character-driven story.

"Safety" can certainly qualify as sweet, but its foundation is firmly planted in comedy. The movie is laced with punchy wit, nerd humor and barbed deadpan driven by the various earnest buffoons Darius ends up managing. It gets a little cumbersome at the end – mostly because so many of the plot's moving parts collide – but really, it's all about the journey. And the journey is cute, funny, easygoing and, yes, just the right amount of weird.