I’m too tired for Lena Dunham: Catherine Called Birdy reviewed

Catherine Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham and it’s a medieval comedy about a 14-year-old girl resisting her father’s attempts to marry her off while yearning to do all the things women aren’t allowed to do. (She would especially like to attend a hanging, for example. And also ‘laugh very loud’.) It most put me in mind of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as it has that spirit, but it does not share that timeless brilliance. It’s fun, and endearing, and the patriarchy gets a good kicking which, as you know, is my favourite thing. But it feels like one joke or sketch that’s been dragged out for nearly two hours. It’s fine, yet forgettably so.

Dunham, who created the HBO hit comedy Girls, which is pure genius, adapted this from the novel by Karen Cushman. It’s a YA novel, which I only realised latterly, but that makes sense, as the film seems to be aimed at the teenage market, and the fact is I may just be too old. (I can only apologise.) It stars Bella Ramsey, known from Game of Thrones, as Lady Catherine, who is also called Birdy as she keeps birds as pets. It’s the 13th century and Catherine lives in ‘the village of Stonebridge in the shire of Lincoln in the country of England’ and has passions that include ‘avoiding chores, critiquing my father’s horrible swordplay and listening through doors I should not listen though’. We first make her acquaintance as she’s participating in a mud fight with her friend, Perkin (Michael Woolfitt), the goat boy, and there is flatulence, not for the last time. It does have a terrific cast. Her nursemaid, Morwenna, is played by (for some reason) a deeply Scottish Lesley Sharpe.