LAGGIES – The Review

A frequent staple of recent big-screen comedies has been the “boy-man”, who almost joins Peter Pan in defiantly singing “I won’t grow up” as he stumbles through life. Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell have played variations of this throughout their movie careers, along with other members of the “frat pack” and Judd Apatow’s repertory company. Now it seems that this role is not an exclusive male domain. Kristen Wiig in THE GIRL MOST LIKELY and Jenny Slate in OBVIOUS CHILD could be referred to as “girl-women” as they were supported by their folks and bounced between jobs. Now, from indie film-making queen Lynn Shelton, maker of 2011’s delightful YOUR SISTER’S SISTER, comes another, slightly younger, post-college twenty-something, who’s having a tough time with adulthood. But, she not only drops out as she befriends a girl almost a decade younger, she hides out. This new film’s heroine seems to be lagging behind her peers, hence the appellation and title, LAGGIES.

Clumsy home-video footage of a big high school formal dance provides the film’s opening flashback. Cut to today, as one of the young ladies, now twenty-five year old Megan (Keira Knightley) twirls an arrow sign at the curb in front of her dad’s accounting office. It’s just to help him, Ed (Jeff Garlin), out till she can find a job worthy of her college degree. But Megan’s not too motivated as she lazes about her folks’ house and the apartment she shares with her boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber). But two traumatic scenes at the wedding reception of her pal Allison (Elle Kemper) cause her to drive away in panic. Just outside a liquor store she’s accosted by Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz) and several of her high school age friends who beg Megan to purchase beer for them. She agrees and spends most of the evening hanging out with the kids at a nearby park. Annika gives Megan a disposable phone (her dad has several) and assures her that she’ll call sometime. Soon, Megan is surprised by a call. Annika needs her to pose as her mom at a school conference (her own mom skipped at on her and dad can’t be reached). This spurs a plan from Megan. She’ll tell her beau, parents, and friends that she’s attending a life-planning guru’s seminar/retreat while she crashes at the home of Annika and her lawyer father Craig (Sam Rockwell). This sends off his inner alarm, but Megan explains that her new home isn’t ready yet. Can Megan keep the multiple fibs going while she tries to get her life back on track?

LAGGIES gives the very talented Ms. Knightley yet another opportunity to display her deft comic skills and perfect her American accent (much better here than in JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT from earlier this year). She gives Megan an endearing, daffy spirit which could have come off as cloying from a lesser talent. We often cringe at some of her questionable decisions (buying booze, impersonating a parent), but we never stop hoping that she’ll get her act together. Megan’s a good person at heart, made clear by her sisterly support of Annika, another complex teen well-played by the always compelling Moretz. She’s assembling quite a screen resume while not yet out of her teens. Moretz also has a wonderful father/daughter rapport with the endlessly entertaining Rockwell who gently adds warmth and intelligence to the laid-back wiseguy attitude he perfected in last year’s THE WAY WAY BACK. His presence in any film is quite a treat. The film also has a great dramatic cameo by the under seen Gretchen Mol, while making good use of superb comic actors Garlin as a gregarious, loving pop (although it’s hard to imagine him siring Knightley), Kemper as the humorless, uptight childhood BFF (the scene at her restaurant is priceless), and Kaitlyn Dever (so good in last year’s SHORT TERM 12) as Annika’s hard-partying pal.

Shelton directs with a deft, light touch letting the actors really explore the impressive first feature film script by Andrea Siegel. The laughs are never hammered home, with the humor flowing from these characters. Megan and her pals feel real, never becoming cartoons set up for a punchline. There are several dramatic turns, but the film never gets mired in the tiresome self-indulgence that bogs down many “entering adulthood” flicks. LAGGIES is a thoughtful, often hilarious slice-of life antidote to many of the overblown big studio joke fests. Here’s to a great new comedy team in Knightley and Moretz. Don’t let time “lag” before you work together again!

4 Out of 5