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Turtles in Movies
 
Laggies (2014)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
This is a romantic drama about a 29-year-old woman who struggles with maturity, with a stellar cast and an interesting use of a tortoise.

A woman (Megan, played by Keira Knightley) who is nearing 30, panics when her boyfriend proposes marriage, so she pretends to go to a personal growth seminar he recommended where they tell participants what kind of animal they are. She actually hides out at the house of a teenage girl she meets (Annika, played by Chloe Grace Moretz) who lives with her father (Craig, played by Sam Rockwell.) Annika's mother ran out on them, leaving behind her pet tortoise she bought after seeing "Finding Nemo." Then she found out that tortoises don't swim. This is a humorous example of what happens when people buy exotic pets without thinking. It would have been much worse if she had actually bought a sea turtle like the one in the movie.
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Annika takes Megan to her house and picks up a tortoise named Lynn that likes to hide behind the couch. Annika tells Megan that her mother got the tortoise before she ran away and abandoned the family. Megan asks if she should feed Lynn and Annika tells her she can try, but the tortoise seems to be anorexic.

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Later we see Megan in the backyard luring the tortoise with a vegetable and Lynn waddles over to her to eat it. Then she holds the tortoise up at a window to fool with Annika's father, Craig, who is, what else, her new romantic interest. Megan tells Craig she thinks she's cured the tortoise's eating disorder.


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Megan's boyfriend asks her what animal was assigned to her at the personal growth seminar. She tells him it's a tortoise. (He told her earlier that his animal was a shark. Later when she breaks up with him she tells him she's really a snake that has been dragging its old skin around with her, unable to shed it, and that's all it takes to shed the old boyfriend and run off with the new guy.

According to IMDB, the tortoise is a California Desert Tortoise named Shelly that was a class pet in a middle school in Seattle, where filming took place. It was not named Lynn after the director (Lynn Shelton). The name was in the original script. Also interesting is the fact that Lynn was originally a dog, but they changed her to a tortoise because that was cheaper.