It’s the kind of publicity angle that film distributors dream about, particularly as their prestige project is jockeying for position in the forthcoming Oscar race. As shouted by a flurry of headlines, the wry, humane coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird – the solo directorial debut of actor Greta Gerwig – is no longer merely “well-regarded” or “critically acclaimed”: it is, officially, THE BEST REVIEWED FILM OF ALL TIME.
What that grand claim actually means is that it holds the record for the longest unspoiled streak of positive reviews as determined by Rotten Tomatoes, the critical aggregation website that classifies reviews by a simple “fresh or rotten” metric. At this time of writing, Lady Bird holds a 100% “fresh” score after 170 reviews have been counted, beating Toy Story 2’s previous golden run of 163.
It’s not a system that allows for much critical nuance, as a five-star rave counts for as much as a three-star pass. If 180 critics unanimously agree that, say, Pitch Perfect 3 is an adequate diversion, it could become the new record-holder. And the distinction crumbles if a single critic writes that they are uncharmed by Gerwig’s gentle vision. That would be fine: great art pursues discussion, not bland consensus.
This is to take nothing away from Lady Bird. The widespread approval the film is getting is predominantly passionate, not shrugging – indicative of a film that is resonating personally with a range of critics and viewers far broader than the white lower-middle-class Californian realm that it depicts with such acute but affectionate specificity.
In her bright, awkward, ambitious, insecurity-riddled protagonist, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, Gerwig has fashioned a heroine reflective of a wealth of outsider identities. In its finely drawn portrayal of economic pressures and class divisions within the relatively privileged belt of Sacramento suburbia, the film cuts a wide swath, speaking generously to the “just getting by” belt of America that rarely sees itself on screen.
It does all that with kindness, smart, often uproarious humour and a candid, feminine point of view – hell, it even quotes Joan Didion in its opening title card – that counters the crisis of gender representation now coming to a head in Hollywood. That makes it tacitly a film for the moment, a modest cinematic antidote to Trump culture.
Setting it evocatively in George W Bush’s America of the early 2000s, hardly a rosy age for American politics or mass nostalgia, courts a kind of bittersweet nostalgia that’s hitting many right in the tear ducts: soft but sober, it’s a film about how bad things were before we knew how bad they were going to get. Small wonder that film critics, a largely liberal enclave, have taken it to their hearts: Gerwig’s film, I sense, will remain a treasured item long after any Rotten Tomatoes records go splat.
