This Indie Movie Just Locked Down Best Rotten Tomatoes Score Ever

The Greta Gerwig-directed indie movie defeated the previous record holder, "Toy Story 3," which also scored a 100 percent "fresh" rating, but had two less reviews with 163 total. Other movies that have earned a perfect score on the popular review aggregator site include Mia Hansen-Love's "Things to Come" and James Marsh's "Man on Wire."

"Lady Bird" has played in less than 800 theaters, but has already earned over $10 million and is now nominated for three Gotham Awards, including best actress, and four Film Independent Spirit Awards, including best actress and best feature.

The indie coming-of-age comedy stars Saoirse Ronan ("Brooklyn") in the title role as a high school senior longing for college in New York while struggling to get along with her overbearing mother, played by Laurie Metcalf ("Roseanne").

Critics are not only praising the performances, but Gerwig's bold and humorous voice in her directorial debut.

"The Gerwig persona we've come to know from her acting — awkward, affable, endearing — is in every frame of this movie, so much so that your brain might visualize Gerwig, rather than Ronan, playing out a particular scene," Newsday Rafer Guzman wrote. "That sense of authorship, though, is what makes the movie ring so true. "Lady Bird" feels like a grown woman's letter to her furious younger self, one that says nothing is so awful, everything is O.K., and someday we'll all look back on this and laugh."

Michael Phillips of Chicago Tribune wrote, "Watching 'Lady Bird' is like flipping through a high school yearbook with an old friend, with each page leading to another anecdote, another sweet-and-sour memory. It's a tonic to see any movie, especially in this late-Harvey Weinstein era, that does right by its female characters, that explores what it means to be a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, and that speaks the languages of sincerity and wit."

A.O. Scott of the New York Times raved, "I wish I could convey to you just how thrilling this movie is. I wish I could quote all of the jokes and recount the best offbeat bits. I'd tell you about the sad priest and the football coach, about the communion wafers and the Sacramento real estate, about the sly, jaunty editing rhythms, the oddly apt music choices and the way Ms. Ronan drops down on the grass in front of her house when she receives an important piece of mail. I'm tempted to catalog the six different ways the ending can make you cry."

"I'll settle for one," Scott concluded. "The bittersweet feeling of having watched someone grow in front of your eyes, into a different and in some ways improved version of herself. In life, that's a messy, endless process, which is one reason we need movies. Or to put it another way, even though Lady Bird will never be perfect, 'Lady Bird' is."