Lady Bird

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lois Smith
Directed by: Greta Gerwig
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Drama
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A teenager (Saoirse Ronan) struggles with coming-of-age as well as her overbearing mother (Laurie Metcalf) in Sacramento, California.

Review:

Tim: Lady Bird received a lot of publicity early on for having a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score for a long, long time. It ended up at 99% positive, which is pretty amazing. For that reason, I was quite excited about seeing the movie. And indeed, I saw the many positives that had critics raving. However, I couldn't help but feel the movie was a bit overrated. It's certainly a very good movie, but I wouldn't consider it great and it didn't land on my top 10 movies of 2017.

It always feels weird writing about movies like this- movies that it seems like everyone loved and I really, really liked. I tend to focus on the gap between the two, but I always worry about coming across overly negative. I really enjoyed Lady Bird. It's a movie I would unhesitatingly recommend. It's an entertaining coming-of-age story that features strong performances and solid direction. It's short, so it never feels like it drags unnecessarily. It's a solid, enjoyable, funny little movie. It's a good film.

The cast was quite strong. Saoirse Ronan is a really talented actress for someone who is still quite young. I might not have completely loved her character, but I grew to understand and appreciate her. The writing certainly helped, but so much of the character came through in Ronan's performance, capturing the essence of being young and in a difficult transition period in life. I was glad Ronan was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. I have no doubt she will win one some day. Laurie Metcalf was good in the supporting performance as her mom. She wasn't the most likable character, but she did tap into an authentic dysfunction that many mothers fall prey to. It was a strong performance and again, I was happy she was nominated.

The film was nominated for three other Academy Awards (although notably was shut out of all categories, which is telling). I disagreed with Best Picture- I do not believe the film was good enough for that level. I suppose I was fine with Greta Gerwig being nominated for Best Director. It brought some much-needed gender diversity to the Academy, especially in that category. I do think there were better directorial efforts not nominated, but Gerwig was solid behind the camera, so the nomination was certainly earned. I did very much believe Gerwig should have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay- the writing here felt quite strong and a big, big reason why the movie felt so strong.

So, if there's so many positives, why didn't I consider this a great movie? It felt to me like the film simply didn't have the emotional impact it needed to be a true contender. Some of this is the run time- it's hard to deliver a knockout punch in 1 hour and 34 minutes (not impossible, but challenging). We could have used a little more time with the characters. The other piece is that the movie didn't feel all that memorable while I was watching it. It felt similar to many other movies and quite a few told the coming-of-age story far better (The Perks of Being a Wallflower felt like a fairly recent example). The characters were quirky, but they weren't especially memorable. I know that you could argue "but her self-styled name is Lady Bird! That's memorable!" It didn't feel like it to me. I was interested in these characters, but I didn't feel the close emotional connection that similar movies have generated with their main characters.

So, for me, Lady Bird is a rung below greatness, but this is still a well-made, enjoyable movie. It's certainly among the better movies in this genre and although it's not in my top 10, it's a really good movie nonetheless.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Perks of Being a Wallflower; Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl