teenage-girl

Really quite uncomfortable. Mia McKenna-Bruce is outstanding: in the film’s third act, the camera sometimes lingers on her face for minutes at a time, and they are some of film’s most powerful moments.

I can see exactly why people love this. It hands you a version of your seventeen-year-old self and asks you to forgive her, which is a generous trick. The complaints land too. Lady Bird is a brat, and the world Gerwig builds around her is conspicuously white and insulated in ways that are never interrogated. But Ronan and Metcalf are excellent, the latter astonishing at times. Gerwig directs tightly. Other directors would have added at least 15 minutes of exposition.

The marketing was the bait: sold to teenage boys who turned up for Megan Fox and got a feminist horror about the intensity of teenage girl friendship and what men do when they need a sacrifice. In 2026 the reading is unmissable; in 2009, a year after “I Kissed a Girl” had pitched queerness as a party trick for boys, Fox’s casting read as more of the same. She is magnetic and clearly having a great time weaponising her own image, and the script gives her some of the best line readings of the decade. Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama and the soundtrack each earn the reputation they’ve developed since release. Seyfried almost convinces you she’s the plain one.

“Never ask for what ought to be offered.”

This will be a specific kind of young person’s favourite film for the rest of their life. 10/10 soundtrack

A franchise’s worth of characters can’t save the franchise

This review may contain spoilers.

Enjoyed the weird little details of the world they’re in, and the final fight scene alone is worth the price of admission.