Small Performances Shine in the Mostly Charming Laggies

It’s an unwritten rule that we’re supposed to feel most in step with people our own age, as if sharing the same cultural and historical references somehow enables our ability to look into each other’s hearts. So why do we sometimes tumble into deeper friendships with people who are ten or twenty (or more) years our junior or senior? Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, based on a script by Andrea Seigel, sidles up to that question without ever asking it overtly. It doesn’t really need to; instead, it simply shows us moments of unlikely connection between people, laying out several kinds of loneliness in all their stripes.

The loneliest character of all — though she doesn’t realize it at the beginning — is Keira Knightley’s Megan, a late-twenty-something who’s just earned an advanced degree but still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She lives in her home town of Seattle, doing truly menial work for her accountant father (Jeff Garlin): She’s a sign-twirler, and she turns this tedious task into a blasé dance routine. Megan’s longtime boyfriend, Anthony (Mark Webber), wants to get married, and even though she loves him, there’s something in her that rails against the life he’s offering.

Part of the problem is that her old group of friends — a gang to which Anthony also belongs — is so busy planning ridiculous weddings and sprouting baby bumps that they can hardly believe that she, too, doesn’t want these things. They’ve also collectively lost their sense of humor, taking offense when Megan does silly stuff, like tweaking the nipples of a naked Buddha in a Chinese restaurant. “Buddha is sacred to a lot of people!” hisses the most uptight of them, a prissy bride-to-be played by Ellie Kemper. Recognizing that she may no longer have a place in her old pack, Megan falls in with a bunch of high-schoolers, among them Chloë Grace Moretz’s orphan-eyed Annika. Megan distracts herself with their problems — their love troubles, their anxiety over parental discord — while she takes a breather from her own issues, though she’s not prepared for one giant, complicating factor: She finds herself attracted to Annika’s dad, Craig (Sam Rockwell), an abrasive, high-strung lawyer who’s still smarting over his own marital disillusionment.

But even though Laggies is clearly well intentioned — and the anxieties it tussles with are completely believable — the film is awkward in ways that are sometimes charming and sometimes disconcerting. For the most part, Moretz and Knightley have a cozy sisterly rapport, but neither performance fully blooms on its own.

It’s the smaller performances that really shine: As Annika’s best friend, Misty, Kaitlyn Dever (who had a small role in last year’s The Spectacular Now, as well as a recurring one on Justified) throws off naughty sparks: She’s a cherubic wisecracker, sort of a post-millennial Dead End Kid. And Gretchen Mol gets just one small, quiet scene, but she’s terrific in it.