Laggies (***1/2)

A laggie sounds like it might be an affectionate British term for what Americans call a slacker, but it may just be an invention of director Lynn Shelton or her screenwriter, Andrea Seigel, referring to someone who has not made much forward progress in life. This would describe 28-year-old Megan (Keira Knightley), who is doing menial work for her indulgent father (Jeff Garlin) and hanging out with her old high school friends despite signs — signs too heavily underlined by the script — that they’ve grown apart. When her longtime boyfriend wants to move forward (by marrying her) and she catches her father cheating on her mother, she retreats.

She does this unconventionally, by hanging out with 16-year-old Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her friends and lying to her boyfriend about her whereabouts. Shelton and Seigel make this unlikely scenario more plausible that it might seem, and work in themes of parental abandonment, infidelity, and teen drinking — and a pet turtle — while making the story cohesive. Sam Rockwell plays Annika’s divorced dad; while Knightley only has a handful of scenes with him, they’re charming enough to credibly set up the later plot developments.

Set in and around Seattle, this is billed as a comedy, and it is funny at times, but it seemed to have almost as much dramatic impact as Shelton’s last film, Your Sister’s Sister. In both cases, she pushes characters together in ways that surprise us —save for the cliché ending — and makes it work.

IMDb link

viewed 11/7/14 4:15 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 11/7/14

Safety Not Guaranteeed (***1/4)

One of the most original comedies in recent years, wherein an ad seeking a companion for time travel provokes the interest of three journalists, is also one of the funniest. The first feature for its writer (Derek Connolly) and director (Colin Trevorrow), it’s also the first lead role for Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation. If you’ve seen the actress on that NBC show, her intern character, Darius, here will seem familiar. Projecting an unusual combination of sarcasm and sincerity, she’s the mistress of deadpan humor. When a potential employer, a restaurant, asks Darius whether she’d ever gone out of her way to do a little extra at a previous job, she simply says no. She’s equally unenthusiastic about her unpaid position at Seattle magazine, but agrees to tag along when one of the staff members (Jake Johnson, of New Girl) heads to a nearby town to see if the ad is for real. Another intern (Karan Soni) is the trio’s third member, a somewhat stereotypically introverted Indian guy.

 

Mark Duplass plays Kenneth, the guy who placed the ad, who will need to be persuaded to pick someone from the team as his companion. The boss makes the first pitch, but doesn’t pass the test—including questions like “Have you faced certain death”— because he’s kind of an ass. So the intern tries her hand. When asked the crucial question, she says if she’d faced certain death she wouldn’t be there. Kenneth is meant to be off-kilter but sympathetic, and so the snarkiness of the beginning of the film (and the Darius character) gives way to something more sincere while remaining funny. A covert operation to procure supplies becomes a brief but hilarious parody of suspense films.

The ending was not what I expected, and I had mixed feelings about it, but it was in keeping with a comedy that has a cynical shell and a romantic interior.

IMDb link

viewed 6/7/12 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/8–6/24/12

World’s Greatest Dad (***)

There are two Robin Williamses, one the manic comic who gained fame with Mork and Mindy, and the other the Oscar-winning star of serious dramas such as Awakenings, Good Will Hunting, and One Hour Photo. I never found his zaniness all that funny, and his comedies have tended to dreck like License to Wed and Death to Smoochy. Now he’s teamed up for a comedy with writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait, another former stand-up comic I was never wild about. (I’m not one for annoying voices either.) So what do you know, this is pretty decent.

It’s a little more edgy than many films Williams has done. He’s the well-intentioned single dad to a teen (Daryl Sabara of Spy Kids) who’s truly obnoxious, and not in a snarky, Ferris Bueller sort of way, but in a creepily sex-obsessed, nobody-likes-me sort of way. Right when it seems like the movie is going to be about Williams’s milquetoast, teacher/unpublished author trying to bond with this hard-to-love boy, it turns into something else. It would be a disservice to give away the key plot point, but it gives the middle-aged man an unexpected way to achieve his literary ambitions, and the boy an unexpected, and probably undeserved, reassessment by his classmates.

From a comic drama it becomes an almost over-the-top satire of American culture at its shallowest. If you don‘t mind the change in tone and some crudeness (i.e., Dad discovering his son’s autoerotic habits), Goldthwait and Williams have created a fairly funny look at perception and self-perception.

IMDB link

viewed 8/11/09 [screening at Ritz Bourse] and reviewed 9/10/09

Shopgirl (***)

This compact drama is an adaptation of Steve Martin’s insightful novella. Martin wrote the script and costars as the wealthy suitor of Mirabelle, the title character played by Claire Danes. Danes, looking forlorn and unassuming in some scenes and delicately beautiful in others, is nicely cast. I’m not sure about Martin. He seems a little timid to have made the slick move that gets him his first date with half-his-age Mirabelle. At the same time, it’s interesting that the older man is not simply a predator. Jason Schwartzman is Martin’s awkward romantic rival. With a mole where much of his right cheek should be, he’s not my idea of a romantic lead, but I have to admit he made me laugh outright at a character that was merely amusing on paper. Martin the screenwriter only partially overcomes the problem that the novella is largely about his characters’ interior lives. The four voiceover segments are both helpful and intrusive. The pace feels sluggish at times. But at its best, Shop Girl retains the spare elegance of its source material.

IMDb link

circulated via email 11/10/05 and posted 10/9/13