Review: Lady Bird

“The current darling of the critics, sitting with a 99% score on Rotten tomatoes. But is it as great as the hype would suggest?”

Every now and then a drama comes out that gets a wide mainstream release. When this happens, it is often held up as amazing cinema and sweeps the awards season. Lady Bird is currently riding that wave, heading towards the Oscars. But is it a great film worthy of huge praise? Not quite... Is it a really good enjoyable film with great performances and a solid story? Yes.

The most impressive thing about Lady Bird is that it is written and directed by first timer Greta Gerwig. The story is an honest coming of age story of an 18 year old girl finishing high school and going off to college. What makes the film work is that the characters, especially those around Lady Bird, feel like real characters rather than stereotypes or cardboard cut outs. Often with these types of films, it seems there’s a lot of focus on the main character, but the other characters don’t get a lot of story time and thus revert to cliché behaviour. But even the douche boyfriend, or the pretty- rich- popular- bitchy girl who has everything, still have enough given to them to be conveyed as realistic characters.

Saoirse Ronan is fantastic in the title role. It’s certainly not a glamorous part, with realistic clothing for a girl from a family who are struggling and a lack of make-up to help sell the idea of teenage awkwardness. Laurie Metcalf is fantastic as the mother who struggles to hold her family together and battles with her daughter who aspires for more, being a tough personality who clashes with her equally tough daughter. They’re fights are great in that much like a real mother/daughter relationship, they can be fighting viciously whilst shopping but then stop fighting midsentence when the ‘perfect dress’ is found for the upcoming first date.

The rest of the cast are also very good in their roles, populating the small world that Lady Bird strives to get away from.

The film tries to be a little too cute in a few spots and the ending didn’t really hit the mark for me. There was also a subplot involving her best friend and a maths teacher that went nowhere and certain moments that didn’t seem to quite add up to anything.

Overall, it’s an impressive film, at 94 minutes it’s a very tight script, especially considering the time given to other characters. Lady Bird continues the strong start to the year in cinematic releases, and continues the trend of strong female focused movies. I don’t think it should win Best Picture at the Oscars, but I’m glad it’s nominated.