******SPOILERS AHEAD******
If you haven’t heard about this film yet, you definitely will once it comes Oscar season. Lady Bird is the movie of the year after it scored the highest ever rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring the lovely Saoirse Ronan and directed by Greta Gerwig (who also starred in Jackie and 20th Century Women), Lady Bird is definitely my favorite film I’ve seen this year so far, and for one very good reason: it’s relatable.
Ok, it might not be relatable for everyone—say for example, a forty year old man—but even so, no one can deny it’s a cinematic masterpiece.
Anyway, I saw this film on a random Tuesday night after finishing my homework early and I had no idea what to expect. I had not seen a trailer or read any reviews. I only knew that it was supposed to be amazing. Now, I have very high expectations when it comes to films. I like the majority of the movies I see, I’m not one of those people who hates every movie but the ones that win awards. However, it is very hard to impress me. I went to the movie all by myself, sat down with some buttery popcorn, and prepared to be amazed. And I was.
During the first few scenes all I could think of was, “Ok, this is me. She is exactly me”. For those of you who have not seen it, I will explain. Saoirse plays a senior in high school who lives in Sacramento, California. She fights with her mom about boys, college, money, and all of the other regular teenage stuff. She is going through what most of us went through in high school: college applications, boy drama, parent/sibling drama, school stress, and just trying to fit in. This sounds like a painfully mediocre plotline, right? Well, that’s kind of the point.
What makes this movie special and what made it get that perfect rating, is the fact that it is real. It is relatable, it does not gloss over anything, it just perfectly depicts what it is like to be a regular 18 year old girl going through their everyday life. She was not this perfect skinny blonde with no acne who parties all the time and somehow gets the perfect guy with swoopy hair and magically gets into Princeton. It wasn’t like all of the other high school movies where the school looks like a college campus and the girls look 25 and wear high heels to school for some reason. No, because that is not what real life is. Real life is not perfect, its not beautiful or glamorous most of the time, and things don’t always work out. That was what this film was about and I loved that.
So, I guess what I’m getting at is this. Please, please, please go and see it. It will make you giggle, it might make you tear up, but most of all it will make you think “wow, I can seriously relate to that”.