Yolanda Medina Skinner

Having enjoyed Lady Bird very much, I was really looking forward to seeing Ms. Gerwigs new film. I was sorely disappointed! While Saoirse Ronan’s strong performance was a delight , and set design and costumes were superb, the rest of the movie fell completely flat. The worst aspect was the screenplay...back and forth, back and forth . Is it future , past, present time or a dream? What? Where are we now? At first it was just challenging to figure out the tense mode, but after all the hard work of keeping track, you just become frustrated & annoyed. My husband couldn’t keep track either; it’s tricky to understand what’s going on. The story line is too chopped up with too many bits and pieces that just weren’t woven into place effectively & weren’t connecting properly. Terrible editing. No flow.As for the direction, I found it way too schmaltsy, doubt I’m spelling that correctly. The way she continuously clustered the girls together as they were talking to each other was as if they were posing for a painter’s portrait, not really interacting with each other. The scene where Jo is comforting Beth looked like they were lying out on the prairie at sunset, yet Beth is supposed to be dying. Why are just the two them hanging out after dark somewhere? Seems like Ms. Gerwig just wanted to stick in a sunset somewhere in the picture! I could go on and on. Chris Cooper & Meryl Streep’s performances were just lost somewhere inside this befuddled flop!