"Remember that time when... ?" That's kind of what Lady Bird felt like for me: a whole series of remember whens, like a flip book of ordinary happenings that you might talk about when some present-time conversation joggles your memory. "Oh yeah, when I was in high school..." etc., the only difference being that in each part you are actually there, if briefly due to the quick editing. It's fun and often funny, but you wonder to yourself why all this ordinary stuff has been so lauded in the press — that is, until the end when it has all accumulated and you find yourself tearful. It's as if most of the movie serves to define for us what Lady Bird feels when she has already left Sacramento, when she looks back. We have flipped through her memories with her, and we really miss home.

In covering a lot of familiar territory, this movie doesn't do anything ground-breaking or strikingly unusual, but on the other hand there's nothing gimicky in the slightest, and it's sensitively shot. For once, home is a real place (Sacramento, at ground level), with real people, which in a way is saying that the acting is wonderful. And being real means that there aren't any movie villians here. Even the comic characters have their contradictions, even Lady Bird's ridiculously-cool second boyfriend.

The tone of the whole thing is interesting to me: skipping along so lightly for much of its length, much as the characters do, staying behind their personas until pressed to come out. It might come off as facile, but the action happens at the seams, in the quick shifts. That's also where it's funny. The mother-daughter relationship in particular has many examples, but I won't spoil it for you. And as I alluded to above, the lack of melodrama is part of the setup.

I saw Lady Bird at the Cinerama last week. I think it's too small-scaled a movie for such a big presentation (or I maybe I should have sat farther away). I remember the big strokes more than the fantastic dialog. Solution: I will watch it again.