Lady Bird is a 2017 drama/comedy written and directed by Greta Gerwig. The film stars Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Letts, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Lois Smith. The movie takes place in Sacramento, California, and it is a coming-of-age story of a high-school senior and her turbulent relationship with her mother.
Well I initially had zero plans to review this film, but holy cow do I need to talk about it. Although there is a lot of Oscar buzz about this film, I really don’t see why. This is not the best film of the year nor of all time, but it is still a pretty good movie. With all that being said, there are some great aspects to this film.
Starting things out with the cast, Laurie Metcalf was freaking amazing. Her character serves almost as an antagonist to this film, and nails her role accordingly. She is both right and wrong in the way she raises Saoirse Ronan’s character, and I absolutely loved her throughout the film. As for Saoirse Ronan? I thought she also did a really good job. Although she was the star of the film, I might disagree as I loved Metcalf the most out of the entire cast. I also enjoyed both Feldstein and Hedges’ characters, but no one really stuck with me as much as Metcalf.
With all that the film also had a pretty decent story. At times I felt like I didn’t know what the main goal was, but come the third act you really have a sense of what this movie is trying to accomplish. Although this film has some pretty decent reviews, this film fails to bring something different to the table. At the end of the film it never really proved to be any different than any other high school drama film.
One thing I didn’t enjoy about this film was its use of cuts. The film skips time literally in the blink of an eye without providing a lick of context to the audience. This left me (and probably many others) questioning how much time had actually passed since the scene prior. Of course it doesn’t take too long to understand what the film is doing, but again.. this is an issue that can easily be resolved without having to explain what it’s doing, or cutting so damn much.
The film also doesn’t really take any risks in trying to stand out above the ongoing list of high school movies. Although it does give a pretty accurate light of what it means to be in high school, it still feels like all the rest. It also didn’t stand out visually or through its sound design. All in all, this was just another high school drama with different actors and different characters.
With all that being said, this is by no means a bad film. The killer aspect of this film goes to its cast, mostly through Laurie Metcalf’s character and Saoirse Ronan. Their chemistry is what moves this film and makes this a movie worth a decent watch. Even with such a great cast and characters, this film falls short in its fast paced cuts and lack of risks. Although it sounds like I’ve been really hard on this film it is by no means a bad one. In the end I decided to give Lady Bird a “Good” on theVade Review Bar. I had little expectations for this film and walked away pretty happy with it. But if I walked into this film with all this talk about the Oscars.. “happy” probably wouldn’t have been the word I would of used to describe this film.
