Review of Lady Bird (2017) by Andrew M — 29 Nov 2017

This is a tough one. Acting wise, it's pretty damn good. Cinematography, pretty standard, but nothing per se. I found the scene-to-scene editing to be distracting, but then again it's meant (I think) to portray memories, in that we don't remember every detail but jump around to moments. The only parts of the story I found really BAD were that there were a couple of characters whose arcs are hinted at but just kind of dropped; what happened to Tommy, what was the issue the drama teacher was dealing with? However, on a critical level I can accept that this was the story Greta wanted to tell and did so quite well.

But yet I didn't like the film. I honestly found it quite boring. I get there are people who will relate to this, but for me it did nothing. It was a slightly better "Boyhood" -- a film that got lots of critical praise, but I absolutely loathed every moment of. Oh, it's nowhere near as tedious as that bore; it's over an hour shorter, the main character has an arc at least. However, it still relies on nostalgia for both a time period and an area I'm not at all nostalgic for. I've always rather liked my hometown, so I can't really relate to wanting to get out of it only to long for it later in life.

I *get* the point of the film, but it just didn't work for me. And that's OK. If you like it, I can understand why. Most slice-of-life type films don't work for me (again, "Boyhood"), and it's rare that one actually does ("Moonlight").

So personally, I was bored. On my own scale it's a 4 / 10 movie, where a 5 is neutral, and in this case it means I can recognize it simply as a movie that doesn't appeal to me.