A decade after her senior prom, with her circle of friends tying the knot and procreating, Megan (Keira Knightley) is adrift, nearing 30, and in a crisis. For example, despite a master's degree, her only job is dancing by the side of the road with a sign advertising her doting father's (Jeff Garlin) tax firm. When her long-term significant other (Mark Webber) proposes, she is blindsided and slips the confines of adulthood entirely by escaping into the fold of local teenagers, one of whom (Chloë Grace Moretz) she stays with for a few days. In the household, she trades flirtatious barbs with her new friend's single father (Sam Rockwell) and begins to function both as an adopted sister and as a type of maternal figure.

Directed by Lynn Shelton (filming another writer's screenplay for the first time), Laggies is a minor, but pleasant film. It is too charming and well-acted to not enjoy, but it is safer than it should be and never achieves profound combustion. The film at once rigs and betrays its own game by portraying domesticity and maturity as dreadful: heroine Megan's old friends are extra-grotesque caricatures, overbearing in their smiling artificiality and wafer-thin chitchat. Who would want to be a member of their club? It is hard to imagine how she, with her natural tendency toward cynicism, ever tolerated or fell in with them in the first place. Yet, at the same time, the film halfheartedly promotes the importance of Maturing and Finding a Place in the Adult World, which it implies may be as simple as finding another, more obliging or enabling mate when the going gets tough. On a thematic level, Laggies is unproductive and a tad unconvincing, and it also sidesteps potential landmines of betrayal and pain. No tension or conflict lingers or boils over.

Vast praise, then, is owed to the ensemble and director Shelton's ability to draw amusing and relaxed performances from her actors. They are a complete delight. As she did in the superior Begin Again earlier this year, the regal Knightley proves her comic ability (and also sports an unimpeachable American accent). She is loose, untidy, in the moment, and brings quantifiable humanity to a character who could be preposterous or unsympathetic. Moretz shades her characteristic poise with authentic adolescent uncertainty, and the wry Rockwell is his usual scene-stealing self: a handsome leading man and an idiosyncratic, one-liner-dispensing character actor blended into one.

B-

I loved this. It was funny and relatable and the entire cast was a delight. A-

What an absolute delight of a movie. Keira Knightley gives what may be her finest, fully realized performance to date. Megan is such a great character that everyone can identify with and she just dug her teeth into it as greatly as she possibly could. Chloë Grace Moretz also gives a wonderful performance and further cements the fact that she is one of the finest young actresses out there and Sam Rockwell was very good with his smaller role. The script was witty and like I said earlier, very easy to relate to. If this opens near you, don't miss this gem of a film. It's really too bad it isn't doing better.

A-