Laggies
Directed by: Lynn Shelton
Written by: Andrea Seigel
Starring: Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Mark Webber, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin, Gretchen Mol, Kaitlyn Dever, Daniel Zovatto
Comedy/Romance - 99 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Oct 2014
Written by: Andrea Seigel
Starring: Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Mark Webber, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin, Gretchen Mol, Kaitlyn Dever, Daniel Zovatto
Comedy/Romance - 99 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Oct 2014
Lynn Shelton’s Laggies shows audiences for the first time that failure to launch syndrome is not confined to the male gender. Our heroine is a 28 year-old female with a trunk full of education and degrees without any corresponding ambition and goals. She maintains an arsenal of excuses why she delays her entrance into true adulthood but appears more comfortable swimming around in self-doubt and not making any choices lest they push her in a direction of accountability. These internal conflicts arrive wrapped inside a so quirky it’s awkward rom-com. Laggies wants the audience to swallow an uncomfortably implausible scenario and then root for the even more unlikely ‘opposites attract’ ending. Neither the setup nor the payoff work so any themes we are meant to connect with including uncertain futures and wondering who you are as a person are lost in space searching for a port in the storm.
Laggies is more comedic and light than Lynn Shelton’s usual more emotional palate we are accustomed to. Your Sister’s Sister (2011) and Touchy Feely (2013) had their moments of levity yet problems with greater gravity affected those films more three dimensional characters. Lynn Shelton also wrote those two earlier screenplays but works off of another writer’s script this time around. The setting is familiar territory though; Washington State and the greater Seattle area’s wet streets and low cloud ceiling hover over the camera and provide a deeper sense of place than any of the characters’ we are trying to connect with.
Laggies is more comedic and light than Lynn Shelton’s usual more emotional palate we are accustomed to. Your Sister’s Sister (2011) and Touchy Feely (2013) had their moments of levity yet problems with greater gravity affected those films more three dimensional characters. Lynn Shelton also wrote those two earlier screenplays but works off of another writer’s script this time around. The setting is familiar territory though; Washington State and the greater Seattle area’s wet streets and low cloud ceiling hover over the camera and provide a deeper sense of place than any of the characters’ we are trying to connect with.
Megan (Keira Knightley, 2014’s Begin Again) feels lost. She has a graduate degree in counseling but realizes after the fact she is not meant to counsel anybody. Spending her days as a sign flipper in front of her father’s store and lounging on the couch annoy her mother and more severely, her once tight group of friends. These four late 20 year-olds have been together since high school. Three of them entered the work force and are getting married and having babies. Megan is the odd girl out and feels the condescension and annoyance dribble down, especially from her best friend and bride to be Allison (Ellie Kemper, The Office).
Megan’s supportive live-in mate who has been her boyfriend for far too long proposes marriage propelling indecisive Megan into a tailspin. Lying about her whereabouts, she lays low for a week with 16 year-old Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz, 2014’s The Equalizer) and her understandably baffled single dad, Craig (Sam Rockwell, 2012’s Seven Psychopaths). None too pleased his pubescent daughter is hanging out with and inviting an inappropriately aged new best friend into their home, Craig, in true romantic comedy methods, thaws too quickly to the weird idea of Megan staying with them and turning all of Megan’s flaws and foibles into reasons to fall in love with her.
Skipping the urge to beat the absurd plot to death, one thing Laggies gets right are the high school kids. These kids are real and confront their respective teenage dramas the way 16 year-olds actually do, with more adult poise than most films give them credit for. Annika, her best friend Misty (Kaitlyn Dever, 2014’s Men, Women & Children), and a handful of others don’t throw ‘tear the house down’ parties or talk way over their heads; they talk in plain language and come off far more grounded and sure of themselves than 28 year-old Megan does. Sam Rockwell’s dad character is around 40 and is naturally more cynical and suspicious than anyone else on screen. He keeps up the charade until the second act when he is required to suspend disbelief and let all the new emotions and situations flood in.
I respect a healthy quarter-life crisis. Not knowing what you want to do and feeling rudderless is a situation just about everybody can relate to. Therefore, the audience will recognize in a second when a character takes it too far. Indecision and disarray are relatable, but hyperventilating at the thought of working in the ‘wrong’ job or the horror that your long-time boyfriend may want to move things forward does not come across as much of a universal truth as Shelton thinks it does.
Comment Box is loading comments...
