Goofball specialist Justin Long stars in this likable tale about a young lecturer who causes uproar when he publically humiliates one of his students
A young creative writing lecturer in New York listens impatiently to a young woman reading her story aloud in class: a so-so piece about a date. He gets her to admit in front of the other students that this is based on an actual experience in her life and there must be a more interesting, true story behind her insipid fiction that she is not revealing. Shyly, nervously, the young woman agrees. He impulsively demands that she tell everyone what it is. She shakes her head, blushes and looks down. But the professor won’t take no for an answer – and finally, not wanting to be artistically dishonest or a bad student, the woman explains that she took her date back to her place where he made a bizarre and humiliating sexual demand. But everyone realises it was less humiliating than what the professor is now making her go through in public.
This is the key event that begins Safe Spaces, which turns out to be an even-tempered indie comedy, five parts late Woody Allen to one part 90s-period David Mamet. The perennially boyish and likable Justin Long, famed for his goofy performances in comedies such as Dodgeball (2004) and Accepted (2006) plays Josh Cohn, the lecturer in question – who is very new to and very naive about academe and student politics, having only taken the job because his own creative writing career is flatlining. He has a complex relationship situation, and his adored grandmother Agatha (a warm performance from Lynn Cohen who, sadly, died earlier this year) is seriously ill in hospital.