Every movie critic adored Ladybird, and I went in to the theater with high hopes. However, I left disappointed. One of my main issues with this movie was the fact that the main character is constantly complaining that she lives “on the wrong side of the tracks” and has “money issues” despite the fact that there is nothing to indicate she’s poor other than dialogue. Her house is actually pretty nice. She goes to a preppy private Catholic school. Her parents could afford adopting and paying for her racially ambiguous brother’s college education. Now, to be fair, most of her classmates are obviously very rich, but to me this whole aspect of the movie came across as privileged and painfully unaware of what is actually considered poor in America. Also, Ladybird, the main character, comes off as an attention-seeking spoiled brat. She ditches her token minority obese comic relief friend to join the popular clique, and when she gets bored with them she goes back to her old friend with zero repercussions. The main conflict of the movie is that Ladybird wants to go to a college in New York, but her mom wants her to go to college at UC Davis. That is the most suburban, mundane premise for a movie I have ever heard. Ladybird is Juno without the creativity or heart. It is Palo Alto without the grittiness or stylish angst. It is a celebration of mediocrity that is so caught up in trying to be relatable that it doesn’t realize how disconnected from the real world it is. Ladybird is what I like to call a “white girl movie”, and if you don’t know what I mean by that, you probably loved Ladybird.
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