Coming off a disappointing previous film (Touchy Feely), director Lynn Shelton returns with Laggies to what she does best —examining likable but flawed characters at a crossroads in their life. Working from a script she didn’t write (a first for the director) and her largest budget to date, Shelton ditches her typical improvisational approach for a more conventional structure. But even with a more refined technique, Laggies still obtains excellent chemistry between its cast, giving off the authentic vibe that we’re used to seeing in Shelton’s work.

It’s been over 10 years since Megan (Keira Knightley) graduated from high school, and while her friends are getting married, having babies, and starting up their own restaurant, Megan twirls signs on the street for her father (Jeff Garlin). It slowly dawns on her that she’s lagging behind her peers and just floating through life. She needs some time away from her social group and her boyfriend Anthony (played by Mark Webber, who always gets typecast for these kind of roles) to clear her mind and to find herself.

This is when the film begins to test your ability to overlook and roll with the nonsensical developments. After buying beer for a group of underage high schoolers, Megan forms a close friendship with one of them named Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz). Megan decides to cash in her I-O-U from Annika for the beer and devises a plan to get away from her routine for a while. So she tells everyone she’s going on a weeklong self-development seminar, but instead stays with Annika at her father’s (Sam Rockwell) house. Like the audience, her father questions Megan’s motives but it doesn’t take much arm twisting before he allows her to stay. Everything goes according to plan until Megan develops feelings for Annika’s father, which threatens to ruin her relationships with Annika and Anthony.

Shelton continues to show her extraordinary ability to get the best performances out of her cast. Knightley puts on the best performance of her career by dominating her own scenes and enhancing everyone else’s around her. Moretz is very much in her comfort zone playing a snippy teenager and pairs well with Knightley. Rockwell has the luxury of getting the best material to work with, playing both the cool dad and the love interest with the effortless charm he’s known for.

There are some great life messages in Laggies, namely about gaining perspective on life while helping others avoid making those same mistakes. Another theme throughout is on the nature of relationships, their fragility and the constant attention needed to make them last. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of predictable moments in Laggies. It’s far too easy to guess how the story’s plot points will turn out before they happen. A predictability that is of course dissatisfying. Filled with solid performances from everyone involved, and an enjoyable original soundtrack by Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), Laggies is Lynn Shelton’s most accessible and crowd-pleasing film to date. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of believability and few moments that contain her unique style, making the film feel overly familiar and generic.

Safety Not Guaranteed thankfully takes its science fiction framework and keeps it in the background, instead putting the focus on its characters and how they grow over the film’s short running time. For the most part the movie gets by on its low-key charm, with two good central performances but the sitcom-like structure drives a giant wedge into the film’s stronger qualities.

A recent college graduate working as an unpaid intern at Seattle Magazine, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) is anti-social and mostly miserable. When Jeff (Jake Johnson), one of the magazine’s writers, takes on a story about an ad looking for a partner to travel back in time with, Darius leaps at the opportunity to work on it. The writer takes Darius along with Arnau (Karan Soni), a nerdy intern who hasn’t been with a woman yet. Darius and Arnau soon find the man who wrote the ad, an awkward grocery store worker named Kenneth (Mark Duplass) who believes he’s being followed and recorded at all times. Darius convinces Kenneth to let her be his time travelling partner, while Jeff tries to get back with his high school sweetheart and Arnau begins to come out of his shell. As Darius gets more involved with Kenneth she starts to fall for him while thinking that he might actually be able to travel back in time.

Plaza and Duplass play slight variations on the kind of roles that they’ve been specializing in over the years. Duplass throws plenty of weirdness on his role as a paranoid outcast, while Plaza brings her character from Parks and Recreation down several hundred notches to something resembling reality. Duplass is terrific at balancing Kenneth’s quirks with the emotional pain his character hides, and Plaza’s greatest strength is the way she gets people to like her without coming across like she’s trying. Their first meeting at the grocery store Kenneth works at is truly enjoyable, showing off their terrific chemistry which is the film’s greatest asset.

Unfortunately Plaza/Duplass’ time is shared with the two subplots involving Jeff and Arnau. Both of the characters’ stories are predictable, and they feel so separate from the main action that at times it feels like they’re in a different film altogether. It also doesn’t help that Jeff’s vain, womanizing qualities make him unlikable while Karan Soni portrays Arnau so broadly that he doesn’t feel like a real person. Each time the film switches its focus to these two it grinds things to a halt.

Luckily the story between Darius and Kenneth is exciting enough to carry things through to the end. The ambiguity over whether or not Kenneth is a genius or a nut is responsible for most of the film’s momentum, and writer Derek Connelly manages to give a definitive answer with a surprisingly satisfying ending. The film’s two subplots feel more like padding which suggests that the time travel story might have been too weak to turn into a feature on its own, but Plaza and Duplass really make the material work. If you can get past the flaws, Safety Not Guaranteed will make for a short but pleasant time.