Laggies

Written by Andrea Seigel

Directed by Lynn Shelton

 Rating: 🔥 That’s hot

Megan is in her late 20’s and is floating through life without direction or purpose. With an unused master’s degree in her back pocket, a long-term relationship that she fell into at a young age, and the same group of friends from high school, Megan is confronted head on with her inability to make decisions for herself when she finds herself engaged to be married. The pressure from her friends and family to “grow up” stresses Megan out to the point that she decides to give herself a week of alone time to get her life together. She tells everyone that she will be attending an out of town seminar to make career decisions, but instead ends up crashing at a new friend’s house for a week. The catch? Her new friend Annika, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is in high school. Through spending a week with high schoolers Megan is able to reconnect with herself and learn some valuable lessons about growing up.

This film really hit me in my late-twenties-feels. It’s such a strange age to be. Some of my friends are married with families, and some of my friends (okay, maybe it’s just me) are spending our days off drinking wine from a box and playing Mario Kart. What I really enjoyed about this film was the overall theme that life doesn’t always go according to plan, and that is okay. Sometimes you marry the love of your life and it ends in divorce. Sometimes you grow apart from your lifelong friends. And sometimes it takes a new friend or a new experience to shake things up and allow you to learn something new about yourself that can alter the trajectory of your life. This film points these things out in a way that is fun to watch.

Our protagonist, played by Keira Knightley, is still carrying her teenage apathy into adulthood and we see how that hinders her friendships with adults and allows her to relate so well to teens. But we also see that, when given the chance, she is also able to form a meaningful connection with Annika’s father Craig, played by Sam Rockwell. Megan is able to connect with both of them because they all share something in common, they’re all feeling a bit lost. Annika is trying to navigate the confusing world of adolescence and growing up. Megan is trying to decide whether she wants to get married or not, and if she should use her MFT degree or continue to be a sign-shaker for her father’s law firm. Craig is a single father trying desperately to provide a stable and loving home for his teenage daughter. They are all different ages and in different stages of life, but their confusion unifies them and shows the audience that there is no magical age that suddenly allows you to have everything all figured out.

Some highlights of this film include; Keira Knightley’s spot on American accent that conveys a sense of bored apathy that I’ve never felt from her before in any of her other roles, Sam Rockwell and Keira Knightley’s sexual chemistry, Chloe Grace Moretz’s performance as an awkwardly relatable teen, and complex characters that wrestle with deep moral issues without making the film too dark or dramatic. Some less desirable aspects of the film include; slow pacing that works for a majority of the film but at times seems to be slow for no reason other than to assure you that you’re watching an indie flick, and an ending that felt half-baked. Overall, I highly recommend this film. Laggies is now streaming on Netflix.

Review written by Zianna Weston