Laggies

Laggies puts a fresh spin on the traditionally male-dominated subgenre of the slacker comedy, by telling the whimsical story of a 28 year-old woman-child’s existential crisis. Keira Knightley plays Megan, a jobless lay-about who retreats from her stalled life to reassess her identity before fully committing to the path she and her boyfriend have been on since high school. Already lagging behind her group of friends, who are all getting married, having children, and settling into their careers, Megan befriends a 16-year old high-schooler (Chloë Grace Moretz) and spends a week camping out with her and her bemused single dad (Sam Rockwell). This is the first picture from Mumblecore graduate Lynn Shelton (writer/producer/director of largely improvised films like Humpday, Your Sister's Sister, and Touchy Feely) to originate with someone else’s script. Young adult novelist and screenwriter Andrea Seigel wrote the picture, which curiously has the unpolished quality that you’d expect from a largely unscripted movie. The movie doesn’t feel like its beats have been thoroughly worked-over through rewrites and studio notes, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side: the film maintains the endearingly loose and ragged quality of a homemade indie, like the previous year’s Drinking Buddies, Afternoon Delight, and Short Term 12. On the downside, the narrative relies on many mainstream rom-com contrivances, which require a high level of finesse to make palatable.

Though this appealing, lightweight feature certainly has its flaws, it offers more insight into society’s current state of protracted adolescence then studio pictures like Knocked Up, Old School, or 17 Again. It’s also far more successful as a rom-com than it has a right to be. This is because Knightley and Rockwell have a surprising amount of on-screen chemistry that elevates their scenes above mere sitcom conventions. Rockwell hasn’t played a lot of romantic leads in his career. Yet he nails this character every bit a perfectly as he embodies roles he’s traditionally cast in--loveable scoundrels like the waterpark operator in The Way Way Back or the expendable crewman in Galaxy Quest, and disturbed psychotics like Gong Show host Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or the morphine addicted Charlie Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Knightley, the elegant, British actress known for her leading roles in prestige pictures like Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina, seems an odd choice to play a spectacularly ordinary girl from Seattle Washington. Yet she somehow finds a way to make the rather passive and dispassionate Megan completely credible and sympathetic. In much the same way Knightley has used her model-thin body and chiseled facial features to portray royalty and British aristocracy, here she employs these same attributes to create a gangly American sluggard who’s not entirely comfortable in her own skin or confident in the way she expresses herself. Its terrific to see Knightley playing relatable, contemporary characters in films like Laggies and this year’s Begin Again. 

Most slacker comedies fall into the contemporary sub-genre of the “bromance.” Films of this type often introduce a love interest late in the story and don’t devote enough screen time to make these romantic subplots feel credible or to earn their often sentimental conclusions. On its surface, Laggies might seem like a female bromance (or “womance,” if you prefer) but the friendship between Knightley and Chloë Grace Moretz is actually a minor aspect of the story. Rather than being the principle narrative thrust, the relationship between the adult adolescent and the actual adolescent serves the larger function of putting Megan into situations that make her rethink her life. Thus the proportions of this story feel more properly allocated than in a typical slacker comedy. Laggies isn’t going to win any awards for originality or thematic innovation, but it has a charming, off kilter innocence and a winning vulnerability that places it a cut above most contemporary coming-of-age rom-coms.