Laggies (2014) - Lynn Shelton

Megan, late 20s, is smack dab in the middle of her quarterlife crisis, struggling to grasp where she wants to be.  Overeducated but a bit aimless, Megan has no career prospects and no motivation to even contemplate her future.  While her group of high school friends check off milestones in their life like marriage, children, etc., Megan is lagging behind, unable to relate to almost anyone.  When her high school sweetheart proposes, Megan panics, given unexpected escape when she meets Annika, a 16 year-old girl who lets her crash at her house with her single father Craig.  Lynn Shelton has always been an incredibly underappreciated filmmaker in my opinion, showing an incredibly ability to take a somewhat generic, schmultzy premise and inject it with geniune truth and profound ideas about our lives.  Laggies is no exception, with Shelton creating a film with lots of fascinating observations about life, growing old, and individuality.  Shelton's Laggies captures the loss of youthful exuberance that comes with old age but it doesn't stop there, presenting a portrait of a woman who is terrified of the organized structure of adulthood.  Laggies presents adulthood as a structured experience, arguing that people's desire to check off milestones in their life goes completely against our desire to live spontaneously.  Megan is terrified of falling into this threshold and perhaps Laggies most important statement revolves around trusting oneself and never going against ones own inner voice.  In a day and age where people view so many things as "selfish", Laggies argues that being selfish is inherently important for happiness, following ones own instincts no matter what others think in an effort to make oneself happy.  Never overly sentimental or manipulative, Laggies is a pensive study of adulthood and finding oneself, being another impressive feature fom Lynn Shelton.  

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