Review: Lady Bird
LADY BIRD
Review by Benjamin Allen Dickson
I’m ashamed to admit how many times I’ve seen this movie, this film holds the record for me, most times I have a seen a movie in the theater ever. A whopping 3 times for this film, which the title originally belonged to the 2007 TMNT film that I loved so much when I was around 10 years old (I saw it twice). I usually don’t see films more than once in the theater, this year I started to more since I’ve been writing these reviews. I saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Blade Runner 2049 twice this year, mostly because I wanted to experience them both with different groups of people.
Lady Bird is a really special movie to me, and I really can’t fully explain why. I completely understand why it might not connect with people, but to me this film really resonated with me. The writing is phenomenal, the characters are realistic, believable and both loved and hated throughout the entire film. I personally didn’t get into most of the rebellious antics that Lady Bird experiences in the film, but I still connected with the spirit of the film. I’m quite a sucker for coming of age movies, so if those don’t interest you it may not be your cup of tea, but there is something very different about this movie, and that’s what this film doesn’t do.
This is what I love so much about this film is everything that it avoids to not be labeled as a traditional coming of age film. It does follow many of the usual events/milestones in a coming of age film like “prom night”, “losing your virginity”, and “losing friends/family, etc” but the way this film goes about it feels so fresh compared to films like Juno or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which are two films I would even say I love. The first time I heard about director Greta Gerwig was when I saw the 2012 film that she starred in called Frances Ha, which I had mixed feelings about but overall I enjoyed the Woody Allen-esque mumblecore awkward comedy, and I feel the best parts of that movie are portrayed in a different yet more interesting way in Lady Bird.
I hate to sound pretentious, but this film captures adolescence in such a beautiful way. I was completely hooked to the screen and by the time the credits rolled I didn’t even realize an hour and a half went by. I can’t recommend this movie to everyone, but to the people who watch this movie, I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
This is honestly my favorite movie of 2017, and even though I am gave Blade Runner 2049 a 10/10 and I am about to give Lady Bird a 9/10, the scores are so close that it's hard for me to decide. It’s situations like these that make me think about getting rid of the number ratings, because I think Blade Runner 2049 is a better, more impressive movie all around, a complete masterpiece, but I think I enjoy Lady Bird and the experiences I had with it more.