Review of Laggies (2014) by Drew R — 01 Jul 2015

'Laggies' or 'Say When' as it was called in the UK, but a character mumbled laggies at one point so I'll stick with that, which actually sounded like somewhat of an insult in the film, is a smart film with great performances.

This film perfectly captured that feeling of newfound responsibility but not knowing what to do with your life and really gave me that feeling in the pit of my stomach of that confusion but somewhat nervous excitement of what's to come; which is obviously great for something like this. The script for this film was really good also, it brings up some good points about all three age groups that are the main focus, it has very, very good dialogue and the characters have real relationships with one another that feel real. I was a little worried at first with the younger characters with them trying to get someone older than them to buy them alcohol but that was in the trailer and I didn't really think about it much. It wasn't until they throw toilet paper everywhere on someone's house that I was thinking that this was going to follow the route that I'm supposed to feel sympathy for a bunch of thugs but that was it and they even explained why they did that. There was one part where Annika was with her friend on her bed and I thought it was going to be revealed that Annika was just pretending to like her but that didn't happen either.

The cast is great and needless to say they all give perfect performances, these are three actors who do great work in pretty much everything and this is no exception, and all three of them were in 4 films in 2014, what a coincidence, they play off of each other great and make everything all the more believable. The film was also quite funny as well and they manage to make the concept of these two characters being with one another not creepy and after a while I forgot about the craziness of it all, as do the other characters, which makes sense. One of the points of it is listening to other people and learning from others no matter what the age is and this is the best way to go about doing something like that.

The film had a solid pace and was consistent with what it was trying to accomplish but nearing the end the film it seemed like it didn't really know what to do. It got serious, with an incident involving a car, for seemingly no reason, the fact that SAM is a lawyer feels at that point like nothing other than a convenience to be used in that scene, and why oh why would you tell him something very damaging right at that moment when he's about to help you? At that point it seemed like everything was set in 'film world' where nobody acts real, which is far removed from the rest of the film, I can understand feeling guilty and probably wanting to say it at that moment anyway, but still, the fact that those two had any kind of relationship in the first place felt like a, 'of course they do', moment, but admittedly, it did work. There was a coincidence earlier on with two characters meeting in a café but I didn't think it was a coincidence when it first happened as it fit and it made sense. It's also funny how she was still wearing that t-shirt after they remarked about taking it off because it was his daughters and she ended up sleeping in Annika's room again anyway. We don't see what he writes on that note either, I thought Megan would wait down the stairs, he would come back out with and would have put a tick in the box, she would go up and he would open the door. But at least this shows that the film wasn't predictable, for the most part, even if I really do wish what I just mentioned had happened.

'Laggies' is an interesting film, it was smartly directed and cleverly written and has three leads that know what they're doing and they all deliver a smart and widespread tale that pretty much everyone can find something to relate to in some way.