29 year old Megan is never going to grow up. Although armed with a degree in Counselling she only works the odd day twirling an advertising board in the street for her over-indulgent accountant father. She lives with her soppy dull-as-dishwater high school boyfriend and has the same tight circle of friends she’s had for years. Now that her best friend is about to get married and another give birth to her first child, Megan looks on them and their way of life with such disdain, that you soon realise the only reason they are still in her life because she is too lazy to move on.
The wedding is the turning point, as when her boyfriend finally plucks up the nerve to propose, Megan runs. Strangely enough into a group of teenagers outside of a grocery store who are looking for an adult to purchase alcohol for them, and Megan strikes up a very age-inappropriate friendship with Annika their ‘leader’. To escape from home for a while, Megan pretends to go to a Personality Building Retreat that her boyfriend has nagged her about for years, but in fact she hides out in school-girl Annika’s room hoping not to be found out.
She does get discovered by Craig, Annika’s dad who has been disconsolate and drunk since his wife walked out on him and he wreaks some sort of revenge on women in general in his day job as a divorce attorney. From this moment on, its more than obvious how the plot of this somewhat likable but very predictable lightweight romantic comedy will end with yet another inappropiate and unlikely relationship.
The basic premise had been that self-centred Megan was trying to avoid her maturity essentially as she was trapped in a life that she felt she didn’t belong, but sadly instead of escaping and gaining independence she simply swapped her life with the dithering boyfriend for one with her new best friend’s father.Directed by Lynn Shelton (who wrote and directed the wonderful ‘Your Sisters Sister’ and the equally appalling ‘Touchy Feely’) this movie from a script by newbie Andrea Siegal just failed to make us sympathise in anyway with Megan’s plight which was the central plank of the piece. Megan was played with great ease by the gangly Keira Knightly who looked more like a teenage boy in her sleepovers with Annika, but the real joy was in the supporting performances. Sam Rockwell was determined to have fun with the far-from-perfect script as Annika’s sardonic very likable father: young Chloe Grace Moretz was spot on as Annika; and Gretchen Moll radiated the screen with her tiny cameo of Annika’s estranged mother.
Labels: 2014, romantic comedy, Sundance
