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Catherine Called Birdy

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United Kingdom, United States · 2022
1h 48m
Director Lena Dunham
Starring Bella Ramsey, Billie Piper, Andrew Scott, Lesley Sharp
Genre Adventure, Comedy

Lady Catherine, known as Birdy, is a spritely and clever 14-year-old girl living at her family's manor in medieval England. Struggling financially, her father, Lord Rollo, begins finding wealthy suitors for Birdy, but the rambunctious young teen has no interest in being married off, much to Rollo's dismay.

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What are critics saying?

80

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Alison Willmore

It doesn’t water down her voice. Instead, the self-lacerating, self-consumed filmmaker seems liberated by the act of adaptation, as though tempering her distinctive creative impulses gives her rein to make a movie that’s tender and more broadly crowd-pleasing, while still very much her own.

40

TheWrap by Dan Callahan

Catherine Called Birdy only shows that dropping Dunham’s sensibility down into the Middle Ages results in a viewpoint that is suffocatingly small and unenlightening.

100

The Playlist by Jason Bailey

Catherine Called Birdy is delightfully witty, irrelevant, and modern-minded while carefully dodging the self-satisfaction and smugness that those descriptors can conjure up.

75

New York Post by Johnny Oleksinski

Dunham has made a really attractive and cohesive film, merging her modern, punky sensibilities with the dirt-and-stone drear of the time period.

91

IndieWire by Kate Erbland

Catherine Called Birdy is so good, so raucous and wild and wise and witty, that it not only makes me eager to write in alliterative adjectives, but to reconsider my views on everything else she’s made in recent years. It’s wonderful.

60

Screen Rant by Mae Abdulbaki

Bolstered by a headstrong performance from Ramsey (who is best known as Lyanna Mormont from Game of Thrones), alongside a fantastic supporting cast, Catherine Called Birdy will be best enjoyed by a younger audience, though it’s still fun enough for viewers of all ages.

50

RogerEbert.com by Marya E. Gates

There is surely an audience for this kind of feel-good quote-un-quote feminism. But a book of such richness, with a heroine as complex as Birdy, deserves much more than this genial Renn Faire romp.

90

Variety by Peter Debruge

The movie wouldn’t have worked half as well had Dunham not discovered Ramsey, a “Game of Thrones” veteran soon to be seen in HBO’s “The Last of Us.” The young actor has a face one might find in a medieval Madonna portrait and a rowdy contemporary sensibility that makes her instantly relatable.

50

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

Neither a broad farce nor a scathing evisceration of sexism (both then and now), Catherine Called Birdy ends up trapped in a dissatisfying middle ground between those two extremes, a tonal decision that results in only mild laughs and somewhat engaging characters.

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