7/10 What would happen if two liberal millennials became stuck in a dangerous, life or death situation during an alien invasion? That is essentially the premise of “Save Yourselves!” and it is a well written, hilarious and original tale for our modern times. Before I get into why this is a good movie that you should seek out, you should know that there are a few problems. The biggest problem is the film’s ending. Without giving anything away, it felt like the screenwriters couldn’t come up with an ending so they just let it end without any closure. Open ended, ambiguous endings can definitely be the perfect ending to a film (“Inception” comes to mind) but here, it is anti-climactic and disappointing. In fact, the first two acts of this film are so strong that when the film gets further into the science fiction of the third act, the pacing slows down and the film unravels a bit, culminating with its unsatisfying ending. Despite issues with the third act and the disappointing ending, everything leading up to that is very strong. Our two lead characters, played by Sunita Mani and John Paul Reynolds are not only well acted, but extremely well written. They feel like a real, genuine couple having their ups and downs as all couples do. The film shows how modern day millennials lack many basic skills that past generations had since they couldn’t rely on the internet to do things for them. Survival skills, firing a gun, chopping wood, navigation and a bunch of useful skills are no longer second nature to many young people today which would be fine in theory except when it comes to life or death situations where those skills can save your life. Seeing these technology addicted millennials struggle to even stay off of their phones for a week is pretty amusing and genuine. Despite the “out there” science fiction aspects, the film is very grounded in reality and that realism heightened its comedy. Seeing this invasion taking place and our lead protagonists being blissfully unaware due to being in a remote cabin and temporarily disconnected from technology was fun to watch. Even after they figure out what is going on, watching them struggle to adapt to the danger and realizing they don’t have any useable skills was pretty fantastic. How real the characters felt, the creativity of the aliens themselves and the sudden bursts of violence they bring about and the humor add up to a delightfully pleasant surprise. It is a shame the film unravels a bit in the third act but since everything up to that point is fun to watch, I still recommend this entertaining, well placed romp. Save yourselves the time of looking up reviews for this on Rotten Tomatoes and go see it at a theater near you.
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