Have a Safe Trip: A Delirious Comedy and Soft Romance

Liz Wiest’s Have a Safe Trip asks the question: What can a too-cool-for-dinner girl and an earnest-enough-to-cook boy do for an evening to and while they confirm if the other likes them enough for a second date? Traversing the galaxy from the carpeted comfort of the floor of a messy house does not sound too bad.

An acid coloured, 11-minute rom-com that uses the fun of psychedelics to poke at the vulnerability of wanting to be liked, it zooms through space, time, and some philosophy, to arrive at our ability and responsibility to take care of each other.

Carl (Michael Stahler), of course, has made dinner. He has been very careful with the cooking, the plating, and the placement. He has, however, forgotten to notice the body odour, the unwashed dishes, the marijuana setup, and perhaps most embarrassing of all, the carelessly thoughtful note on the fridge (announcing) wishing him luck on his date. It may be the last of the munchies, but Michelle (Carleigh Spence) turns up with her hand inside a nearly empty bag of chips and a happy grin on her face.

From the start they create an entertaining mix of awkwardness and flirtation. Carl moves with the zippy stylisation of a cartoon, a rather fitting feature given he actually turns into a cartoon in a brief animated sequence—nothing gets the idea of boundlessness quite like animation. Michelle would have been a manic pixie dream girl: she is beautiful in a larger than life way (a Jena Malone meets Emma Stone kind of face) and similarly unencumbered. But she really is too cool to invest herself in changing someone else’s life.

The editing is ticklingly funny and the music groovy. Stahler’s physicality and Spence’s dialogue delivery are central to the comedy (they dial it down to match the sincerity of romance). The romance is empirically almost a subplot, but reaching beyond your ordinary self to soothe someone else’s abrupt and absurdist loss of meaning must be one of the highest gestures of romance—pun happily intended.

The wordplay of Have a Safe Trip is then meant to the full extent. It is as much a wink and nudge for the audience as it is an expression of care between these characters who are beginning to find a rhythm that has all the markings of a long-term love. One dreams.

Watch Have a Safe Trip Short Film