A sweet, deeply personal portrayal of female adolescence that's more attuned to the bonds between best girlfriends than casual flings with boys, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s beautiful Lady Bird flutters with the attractively loose rhythms of youth.

Lady Bird is something truly special: a coming-of-age comedy so funny, perceptive, and truthful that it makes most other films about adolescence look like little more than lessons in cliché.

A lovingly observed, pitch perfect coming-of-age comedy, Gerwig's warm, astute account of the end of adolescence is a stunning solo debut.

Lady Bird is both snarky and sincere — a touching, markedly feminine ode to growing up that never takes its familiarity for granted. Gerwig earns the ability to make this rite-of-passage saga her own.

Lady Bird is one of the year’s great joys. Greta Gerwig’s debut as a solo writer-director is so wise, so funny, and so remarkably assured that it seems to have flown in out of nowhere.