Say When

Stars: Keira Knightley, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Mark Webber, Jeff Garlin, Ellie Kemper, Gretchen Mol, Kaitlin Dever

Director: Lynn Shelton

This is a kind of romcom, I suppose, although rather more rom than com. Knightley, looking older, which hardly suits her role, is Megan, part of a group of friends, all pushing 30, who have been together since college. Most of them have 'grown up', but not Megan; at a hen party, she plays a slightly rude game with her friends, in which they have to caption a cartoon. Two of the four make up amusingly suggestive lines, but Meg's effort is vulgar without being funny; she can't understand why the others don't get it.

Engaged to another of the group (Webber), with whom she's lived for eight years, Meg shies away at his proposal of marriage, and invents a week-long seminar to give herself a break, not altogether surprisingly bunking up with a 16-year-old (Moretz) she's met accidentally, attracted by a skateboard at which she used to be an expert.

Moretz has a lawyer father (Rockwell) - his wife (Mol) left him long ago - who expresses some surprise at finding a 29-year-old women on his daughter's bedroom floor - but allows her to stay the night.

Can you see where this is going? You can? Really! Yes, it's predictable and not altogether helped by Rockwell and Webber looking somewhat alike, but Knightley still looks gorgeous when she smiles, and the script supplies us with a few nice scenes, as when Megan stands in for the teenager's long-lost mom at a touchy school interview, or when she takes the blame for Moretz's drunken friend crashing his parents' car. The best performance in the film, though, comes from Rockwell's honey-voiced, laidback lawyer.

David Quinlan

USA 2014. UK Distributor: Icon. Colour (unspecified).
98 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 04 Nov 2014