LADY BIRD (B+) - We were hoping for greatness from Greta Gerwig's solo debut as a writer-director, and while her biographical tale is lovely and lyrical, it isn't quite as compelling as it could have been.
Gerwig plays it safe with a moving but safe recounting of her senior year of high school, dreaming of escaping her Catholic-school Sacramento for the ivied walls and academic rigor of the Northeast. Saoirse Ronan stands in for young Greta, a spitfire who dubs herself Lady Bird and quarrels pithily with her working-class mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf). Her father (Tracy Letts) is the good cop but a bit of a cipher.
Lady Bird explores her sexuality in mundane ways. She is betrayed by one boy (Lucas Hodges, dull compared to his breakthrough in "Manchester by the Sea") and falls in with the kindly hipster Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), and neither love interest adds much to the mix. Lady Bird herself betrays her chubby best friend for a shot at hanging with the cool girl, a concept explored with more edge and dark humor in an aged sitcom like "Square Pegs."
This is territory that has been explored ad nauseam in other coming-of-age films. Gerwig, at least, adds a bit of flair and quirk, as if she herself were jangling and bantering through the scenes. Ronan carries the load here well, and Metcalf is her usual spectacular self, delivering bushels of emotion with a fleeting facial expression than most actors can deliver in a Shakespeare soliloquy.
You hope for grit and soul here, but you get a bit too much of amber memories, almost a form of magical realism, a conjuring of revisionist history that doesn't insult the real people it's based on. Too many of the zingers fall flat. (The best ones work better in the trailer.
At times "Lady Bird" is a special little film. But Gerwig, who first went behind the camera with Mumblecore pal Joe Swanberg in the insightful film "Nights and Weekends," has emerged from the indie scene with mainstream cred. Perhaps she just needed to get this one out of her system. Let's see where Lady Bird lands next.
Lady Bird explores her sexuality in mundane ways. She is betrayed by one boy (Lucas Hodges, dull compared to his breakthrough in "Manchester by the Sea") and falls in with the kindly hipster Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), and neither love interest adds much to the mix. Lady Bird herself betrays her chubby best friend for a shot at hanging with the cool girl, a concept explored with more edge and dark humor in an aged sitcom like "Square Pegs."
This is territory that has been explored ad nauseam in other coming-of-age films. Gerwig, at least, adds a bit of flair and quirk, as if she herself were jangling and bantering through the scenes. Ronan carries the load here well, and Metcalf is her usual spectacular self, delivering bushels of emotion with a fleeting facial expression than most actors can deliver in a Shakespeare soliloquy.
You hope for grit and soul here, but you get a bit too much of amber memories, almost a form of magical realism, a conjuring of revisionist history that doesn't insult the real people it's based on. Too many of the zingers fall flat. (The best ones work better in the trailer.
At times "Lady Bird" is a special little film. But Gerwig, who first went behind the camera with Mumblecore pal Joe Swanberg in the insightful film "Nights and Weekends," has emerged from the indie scene with mainstream cred. Perhaps she just needed to get this one out of her system. Let's see where Lady Bird lands next.
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