Review of Lady Bird (2017) by Jenna I — 05 Jan 2018

I have no nostalgia for being a teen, I've never smoked a clove, my mom is pretty chill and I didn't grow up Catholic or in suburbia so there was definitely just like an emotional / world disconnect for me here. I sort of chuckled a couple of times, but I was nowhere near the like hysterical side-stitch laughter the rest of the theater was in. For real, did they give out laughing gas to everybody but me before entering or am I just like totally missing something?

What I did like about this was its truthful portrayal of teenagerdom - making hard-nosed decisions and sticking to them forever until you suddenly realize you can drop them without any consequences. Or just blindly accepting a fellow teen's life view as gospel for who they are and never questioning their motives or logic. Arguing nonstop with your parents over stupid shit and being both grateful and ungrateful. Slowly realizing your parents are just as flawed as anybody else and not always right all of the time. So in those senses I thought this was a well-done honest portrayal of teen lyfe. But teens kinda suck, and Lady Bird as a character is too impulsive for me to relate to, so I basically left the movie feeling pretty neutral.

I wonder if perhaps it's because I've never watched all of those 90s and 80s teen flicks so I'm not like locked into certain expectations for a teen movie. Like yeah, teens are weird and lame. I guess other teen movies don't normally reflect that? Sorry, I typically just avoid the genre.