Girl Flu. (2016)

Girl Flu.: Directed by Dorie Barton. With Katee Sackhoff, Jade Pettyjohn, Jeremy Sisto, Heather Matarazzo. Bird, 12, has to become a woman whether she wants to or not when – in the worst week of her life – she gets her first period, is ditched by her impulsive, free spirited mom, and learns that you can never really go back to The Valley.

“This is certainly unusual, a film made by a woman in which the bad guys are women and both the main male characters are sensitive, unselfish paragons, who do and say the right thing every single time. Weird, and not that convincing.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s well enough acted across the board, has a decent script, and I really wanted to like it because the young actress playing Bird gives an excellent performance, and really brings home how shocking and dispiriting this experience can be, especially first time around. But every time I started to get fully into this, the film cut away to yet another scene of the ghastly selfish mother character behaving unreasonably, while her boyfriend listens calmly, patiently trying to explain to her what reasonable means. Why would anyone even bother?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe two males, the motheru0026#39;s boyfriend and the boy who wants to be friends with Bird, are both too good to be true, the mother thinks everything is about her (literally) and unfortunately, the director seems to agree with her. In the end I didnu0026#39;t have the patience for all the repetition, but if you can put up with the motheru0026#39;s boring antics, you may find this worthwhile.”