Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story:
Coming-of age dramedy written and directed by Greta Gerwig in her directorial debut. The story centers on Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a headstrong high schooler who wants to escape from her family and small California town by going to college in New York. She hates everything about her life and town and has a turbulent relationship with her mother, Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse who is a wildly loving, deeply opinionated and a strong-willed mother working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father, Larry McPherson (Tracy Letts), loses his job.
Our Favorite Quote:
Best Quotes
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I hate California, I want to go to the East Coast. I want to go where culture is like New York.
Marion McPherson: How in the world did I raise such a snob?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire where writers live in the woods.
Marion McPherson: You wouldn’t get into those schools anyway.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Mom!
Marion McPherson: You should just go to City College. You know, with your work ethic just go to City College and then to jail and then back to City College and then maybe you’d learn to pull yourself up and not expect everybody to do everything.
[just then Christine opens the car door and jumps out as the car is moving]
College Professor: Lady Bird, is that your given name?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Yeah.
College Professor: Why is it in quotes?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I gave it to myself, it’s given to me by me.
Father Leviatch: Because it’s not important to be right. It’s only important to be true.
Danny: [to Marion] Lady Bird always says that she lives in on the wrong side of the tracks, but I always thought that that was like a metaphor, but there are actual train tracks.
Kyle: What you do is very baller, very anarchist.
[we see Christine try to stuff a magazine inside her skirt]
Miguel: Put the magazine back!
Shelly: [to Christine] She has a big heart, your mom.
Danny: [referring to Marion] She’s warm, but she’s also kind of scary.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: You can’t be scary and warm.
Danny: I think you can, your mom is.
Teacher: So you’re not interested in any catholic colleges.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: No way. I want schools like Yale, but not Yale because I probably couldn’t get in.
Teacher: [laughs] You definitely couldn’t get in.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Does mom hate me?
Larry McPherson: You both have such strong personalities.
Marion McPherson: If you’re tired, we can sit down.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I’m not tired.
Marion McPherson: Because you’re dragging your feet.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: You are so infuriating!
Marion McPherson: Will you stop yelling?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I’m not yelling.
[Marion picks a dress and holds it up]
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Oh, it’s perfect.
Marion McPherson: Do you love it?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: When is a normal time to have sex?
Marion McPherson: You’re having sex?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: [after they’ve just had sex] I just wanted it to be special.
Kyle: Why? You’re going to have so much unspecial sex in in your life.
Parish Priest: We’re afraid that we will never escape our past. We’re afraid of what the future will bring. We’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked. And we won’t succeed.
Marion McPherson: Whatever we give you it’s never enough. It’s never enough!
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: It is enough!
Julie Steffans: You can’t do anything unless you’re the center of attention!
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Yeah, well you know your mom’s tits, they’re totally fake!
Julie Steffans: She made one bad decision at nineteen!
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Two bad decisions!
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I just, I wish that you liked me.
Marion McPherson: Of course I love you.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: But do you like me?
Marion McPherson: I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: What if this is the best version?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: What I’d really like is to be on Math Olympiad.
Teacher: But math isn’t something you’re terribly strong in.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: That we know of yet.
Casey Kelly: The girl in the story was my mother. I am that baby that she decided not to abort. That could have been me. That could have been my fate.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Just because something looks ugly doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong.
Casey Kelly: What did you say, ma’am?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Nothing.
Casey Kelly: Please. Share.
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: I said, “Just because something looks ugly doesn’t mean that it’s morally wrong.”
Casey Kelly: You think dead children aren’t morally wrong?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: No. I’m just saying that if you took up close pictures of my v***na while I was on my period, it would be disturbing, but it doesn’t make it wrong.
Casey Kelly: Excuse me?
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson: Listen. If your mother had had the abortion, we wouldn’t have to sit through this stupid assembly.
Julie Steffans: Some people aren’t built happy, you know.
Trailer:
• A year in the life of a young woman living in northern California who believes she’s bigger than the town she’s from.
• Written/Directed by: Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha, Mistress America).
• Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf.
Orange County meets Garden State, without the pizazz.
Based loosely on Gerwig’s own life and where she’s from. Lady Bird was an honest and truthfully told coming of age story, that I’m sure will ring like a cult anthem to many a millennial. It was relatable and real and never the less, boring. Like taking a trip through a high schoolers diary: It was fun and intriguing at first, but after 100 pages it started to feel more like being stuck on a long bus ride in which you asked the wrong person ‘how’s it going?’
coming in, I assumed that if I didn’t care for this movie, it would surely be because it just wasn’t ‘for’ me. That it would be a good film but I wouldn’t be able to understand or connect. As it turns out, the problem for me was quite the opposite. This film does a fantastic job of capturing characters at a certain time in their lives – as a child, parent, sibling, and young adult – that we’ve all gone through. But, maybe that’s just not enough anymore?
The problem with the modern day coming of age tale is, we’re a generation who records and captions every emotion, micro-milestone, and urge in real time. The world is a battlefield, and we’re all armed to the teeth with unlimited automatic time capsules. And because of that, every day when you log onto your social media and scroll past the latest TimeHop, it feels like you’re ingesting real, relatable coming of age stories by the handful. Watching a film all about the petty little struggles we all face used to feel like a validation. Unfortunately, that ‘WHAT?! ME TOO!’ feeling I used to get from them has been replaced with a dismal ‘…yeah, we know.’ There’s nothing left unexplored about the purely relatable anymore, not on its own.
The acting was marvelous (We’re probably looking at a string of Oscar nominations here) and first time solo director Greta Gerwig was about as comfy in her chair as Captain James T. Kirk was in his. If this movie came out a decade ago, or attached itself to a more objective plot, this would have been a way different review.
As it stands, this movie may have captured some raw truth, but it failed to capture my attention.
PRESCRIPTION:
For a better coming of age movie: Watch boyhood (which could have just as easily been called sisterhood or motherhood or fatherhood)
For female driven movies I enjoyed more, tackling these themes and subjects: Pieces of April or Ghost World.
Rating: 3/5
This is the worst movie I’ve seen in a long time. I know this will cost me real grief but I’m not a Hollywood pseudointellectual who voted for an award for this movie. I found it to be very boring and very depressing I didn’t see any plotline. I know The Hollywood line is that this was a great movie. I left a movie about halfway through I was so bored to death. But then again I’m a deplorable. When I go to see a movie I want to be entertained not bored and depressed. I would recommend That anybody who suffers from depression not see this movie because I want to commit suicide halfway through. So if you want to take my advice don’t waste your time or money going to see this movie.
Rating: 1/5