Lady Bird Review

Oscar season is in full force right now and I am excited to now be talking about a major contender in the best picture race that I saw just over a week ago. It's worth noting that, yes, I'm just as big of a fan of big summer/holiday blockbusters as the next guy. Heck, I think I gave the new "Avengers: Infinity War" trailer nearly half of its 48 million views yesterday and I've been so excited for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" that I had a dream the other night that I was in the theater about to watch the movie. I woke up for that dream in such a good mood because I realized that that very experience is just two weeks away. Despite that, though, my favorite season of the year is Oscar season. Not necessarily because of the awards themselves. I usually get mad at the Oscars for nominating the wrong films and awarding the wrong nominees with the gold trophies. But this is my favorite season because of the sheer volume of quality independent/art house films that come our way. Films from filmmakers who truly understand the art of filmmaking wherein story, characters and acting are at the forefront rather than fancy visual effects and endless amounts of action sequences and explosions. Again, the latter can be fun, but that's not the sole reason why movies should be made.

On that note, "Lady Bird" is a movie that has achieved quite the remarkable feat on Rotten Tomatoes. With 181 reviews counted as of the publishing of this post, it has maintained a perfect 100 percent. That's the highest number of reviews ever counted for a movie that stayed at 100 percent on the site. The previous high count for a 100 percent film was "Toy Story 2." Thus one could say that it's the best reviewed movie ever on the site, as some outlets have reported. But that wouldn't be completely true because Rotten Tomatoes actually keeps an updated list of that on their site in which they use a weighted, Bayesian formula based on several factors in which "The Wizard of Oz" is currently in the lead. "Lady Bird" is currently No. 37 on that list, behind other 2017 films "Get Out," "The Big Sick," "Dunkirk," Wonder Woman" and "Logan," with the potential to climb higher as more reviews come in. But that's beside the point. A perfect score is hard to maintain and it's really impressive that it is nearing the 200 review count without getting a single negative review. That doesn't mean all 181 of them have crowned it as the best movie of all time. That just means all of them have at least given the movie a pass. Not one single Grinch has hated this movie. Knock on wood.

So what is this movie that has received such positive praise? Simple really. It's another one of our high school, coming of age dramas. Christine McPherson, who has nicknamed herself Lady Bird, is a senior in high school at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California acting very much like a senior in high school who is excited to get away from her horrible family and boring life in this dull city when she finally graduates and is able to go off to college. The movie takes place over the course of a year as we watch her live out her senior year. That's it. That's our movie. Now after watching the trailers and reading some of the reviews, I went into this movie rather giddy and excited. However, as we began this movie, I began to ask myself the very question that you are probably asking yourself right now after having read my description. How is it that a movie with this specific premise, of which we've seen a hundred times before, being considered as one of the best movies of the year and a serious contender to win best picture? As I began, I thought to myself that this may be one of those movies that is perfectly enjoyable, but not necessarily a personal favorite of the year. Maybe it was going to be like Saoirse Ronan's 2015 film "Brooklyn." A good movie, but not a great movie?

However, as we continued through the film I found myself absolutely shocked as to how much I was enjoying this film. I've liked plenty of high school dramas, from older ones like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to more recent ones such as "Easy A" or "The DUFF." Even this year's "Spider-Man: Homecoming" falls into that category. But I kid you not, never have I been this invested into a film from this genre as I have "Lady Bird." When I began to think of comparisons, it's not those previously mentioned movies that came to my mind first. There were two other movies that came to my mind that DID make my top 10 lists in their respective years. The first being "About Time" from 2013 and the other being "Boyhood" from 2014. "About Time" is a small film that looked like it was a typical romance drama with time travel elements, but ended up being more about the relationship between a father and son that was deep and emotional. "Boyhood" is a rather epic movie filmed over the course of 12 years that is about a family living life from when the boy is six years old to when he is 18 years and moving onto college. Take that idea from "Boyhood," except only do one year instead of 12, then add in the deep parent/child relationship from "About Time" and you have "Lady Bird."

Even though this movie is about Lady Bird living life during her senior year, the movie is centered around the drama between Lady Bird and her mother. What makes this so fascinating is how real this feels. Greta Gerwig, who is mainly known for her acting, steps into the director's chair for the first time and you know from the very first sequences of the movie that she just gets it as a writer and director. She knows what it was like to live as a senior in high school and she has crafted a film that perfectly represents that period of still being quite immature, then transitioning to adulthood. In fact, Greta Gerwig went to a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California, so you could almost say that this movie is semi-autobiographical. That's what it feels like, anyways. This feels less like a movie you are watching and more like footage from an actual family trying to make it in the world. I said earlier that Lady Bird is a girl trying to get away from her horrible family. Truth is, her family is not horrible at all. That's just what it's like from her perspective, which is typical for a high school student. The mother in this movie, played by Laurie Metcalf, is a fantastic mother who is struggling to figure out how to raise such an independent-spirited teenage daughter.

I imagine you can go into this movie and appreciate it from multiple perspectives. Those who graduated high school recently can watch this movie and appreciate the fact that this movie so perfectly portrays what it is like as a teenager in high school. Lady Bird goes through several different phases throughout the year that are easy to relate to. She's such a fun, quirky character that I just wanted to go be her friend because it seemed like she would such a great person to be around. There's a lot of things that she did that had me laughing hysterically. But then, in typical high school fashion, something unexpected would happen that was like a punch in the gut. In those moments, I just wanted to go up to Lady Bird and tell her that everything was going to be OK. Let her cry on my shoulder or talk together about how much life sucks sometimes. That's the type of relationship that I had with this movie. Given that I'm not that old, the high school aspect was what I was able to relate most with, but I imagine that parents with teenage kids are going to watch this and have similar reactions towards Laurie Metcalf's character as the mother. I imagine it's really tough to try to raise a teenage child and I'm confident that this movie perfectly captures that feel as well.

In short, the relationship between a parent and child, regardless of situation, can be a difficult relationship due to the fact that both often have the same personalities. When both have strong personalities, those personalities can clash really hard as the child wants to be independent but the parent wants to be stern because they want what's best for the child. The child will be angry and mad at the parent and want to get away while later in life, after coming of age, the child will then realize how great the parent was. They will grow up and have children of their own and turn into the parent that they once clashed with. This relationship and this bond was captured so perfectly in this movie that I fell in love with it. Helping this out, I think Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf both gave brilliant acting performances that are well worth the Oscar nominations that they better both get. As far as Saoirse Ronan goes, I've been following her for a while. I first noticed her in "Hanna" in 2011 and have loved her ever since. Each one of her characters is quite different, but she plays them all so well. Yet Lady Bird might be my favorite character she's played. And I'm also happy that I now know how to pronounce her name. You say it "Sersha." As in rhyming with "inertia."

I started this review by talking a lot about the Rotten Tomatoes score and I want to end this review by following up with that. Just remember, a Rotten Tomatoes score is the percentage of critics who gave the movie at least a pass. A movie in the 90 percent or higher range does not necessarily mean that everyone thinks the movie is the greatest movie ever made. It just means that a lot of people enjoyed it. Given how much buzz "Lady Bird" is receiving on the awards front, my biggest fear is that it will receive too much buzz. I would absolutely hate it if the second wave of people went in expecting "Lady Bird" to be the greatest movie ever made and walked out deciding that they hated it because it didn't live up to these lofty expectations. "Lady Bird" is a smaller, homely-feeling movie about what it's like to transition from adolescence to adulthood. And it does a perfect job at that. Go in with those expectations and I think you will fall in love with this as I did. The only thing that upset me was that the movie ended. While it absolutely ended perfectly, I wasn't ready for it to end. I wanted to keep going with this story and these characters to see what happened next because I was so invested. I think that's the sign of a truly great movie and thus I am confidently giving "Lady Bird" a 10/10.