How to Build a Girl Review
R: Sexual content, language throughout and some teen drinkingRuntime: 1 Hr and 42 MinutesProduction Companies: Film4 Productions, Tango Entertainment, Protagonist Pictures, Monumental PicturesDistributor: N/ADirector: Coky GiedroycWriter: Caitlin MoranCast: Beanie Feldstein, Alfie Allen, Paddy Considine, Emma Thompson, Chris O'Dowd, Jameela JamilRelease Date: May 8. 2020 (VOD)
Enter the high-spirited, ambitious Johanna Morrigan, a British 16-year-old teenager of a working class family in the ‘90s. Keen on becoming a poet, her dreams are immediately crushed following an embarrassing TV appearance where she’s contacted to read one of her poems on air. Now more of an outcast than ever, Johanna decides to reinvent herself and trajectory her career towards another literary path: journalism. She applies as a music critic for a punk rock music outlet without any knowledge of the music industry, creating an alter ego in the process named Dolly Wilde, and navigates through a new lifestyle involving sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
For the past several years, Beanie effin’ Feldstein has been on a roll as the leading star in features that challenge her to take charge and demonstrate her wide range of skills as an actress. Basically, Beanie Feldstein has been killing it in the — sigh — titular role.
During TIFF, I saw her latest comedic feature, How to Build a Girl, directed by Coky Giedroyc and based on the novel of the same name by Caitlin Moran, who also wrote this feature adaptation. As expected, it’s another cementing case of the gleaming star power of Feldstein’s talent, who simply deserves the world.
As far as coming-of-age comedies go, How to Build a Girl treads along the same lines as many narratives on this type. We’ve seen the “overachieving, academic all-star social outcast who obtains popularity” storyline many times, but what gives this comedy heft is the perspective of the overly ambitious lead and Feldstein’s performance. She delivers a solid British accent that doesn’t feel like it’s laid on too thick. Moving at a speed best described as the British Molly from Booksmart but more vulnerable — a bit vocal about their self-centeredness — meets the curious drive of Bel Powery in Diary of a Teenage Girl, Feldstein exhibits an entertainingly spunky eccentricism. Her undefeated spirit drives her through as a typical, lovable Beanie Feldstein character, including the savagery. What worked for me was watching Johanna’s character transform into Dolly Wilde, who is the complete antithesis of everything Johanna represents and the well-earned build up that leads her there. Her lifestyle is established as Murphy’s Law where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. The only people she calls her “friends” are her supportive brother, which she shares a room with, and the framed images of famous literary figures on her wall that come to life via her imagination. You sympathize with her heavily at first as she and her family receive the short end of the stick for so long that, once this British fish out of water delves into music like a newborn deer trying to walk, you’re engaged in her journey and her change of identity as she becomes obsessed with rock to the extent that she crushes heavily on a big musician — John Kite — who opens up to her in an interview that gets personal and off the record. But, due to the testosterone-ruled outlet criticizing her positive point of view, she’s peer-pressured into becoming a mean, savage critic. The Armond White/Richard Brody of music, if you might say. Her naivety may be grating as she becomes easily influenced by her newfound peers of toxic, misogynistic men running the outlet, but once she becomes ‘Dolly Wilde’, a confident and mostly bitchy version of Johanna, the film becomes funnier and more entertaining. She bears a similar complex to The Nutty Professor with the exception of a potion. All it took for her was to be influenced by the staff room of toxic misogynistic men and, boom!, she becomes the biggest asshole amongst the dicks. Thank God Alfie Allen is done with Game of Thrones so we can see him prosper in more roles. He plays a soft rock musician, John Kite, who vulnerably opens up to Wilde in an interview and she becomes completely infatuated with him. He displays this fresh, soft, sweet-natured charm, and if that’s Allen actually singing in the film — which I doubt — then he has a voice.Then, you have Paddy Considine as Johanna’s father who was a washed up wannabe rockstar who wants to pursue a career in music so damn bad. Minus the washed up rockstar part, Considine is kind of playing Considine, because if you check that dude’s Instagram, he is a huge rock stan. There are moments in the film where he’s playing instruments and it’s funny because that’s just him and his natural talent in the glow. The dude is still working on music right now so that’s good for him. This role was kind of his calling.
Congrats, movie, you had me searching what the legal age of British girls is ‘cause, uuuuh, I was truly uncomfortable. People gave me shit for turning a blind eye to the age gap between Elio (17) and Oliver (25) in Call Me By Your Name, but here I am stomping my ground. Maybe it’s because I’m an American and our legal age is 18, but even the concept of a 16-year-old sleeping with someone in their twenties is just… ew. That said, Dolly Wilde’s sexcapades made me really uncomfortable because there are sequences of her sleeping with older men in their twenties while, I repeat, she is 16. Wilde’s major love interest is John Kite who is significantly older than her and I’m just sitting in my seat squirming and sinking.
Aforementioned, How to Build a Girl hits all the beats of a very standard coming-of-age story with its own identity, which is okay, but it often asks you to suspend your disbelief in a manner that it becomes more of a fantasy than the lead’s imagination. As much as I enjoyed Johanna’s transformation into Dolly and watching her savagely rip everyone a new one with hilarious lines of dialogue, there is an action she makes towards John Kite that is so damn unforgivably fucked up, and her motivation creates a large disparity between you and your sympathy towards her. By the end of the movie, long after she's rightfully disgraced, she manages to get her way when in reality you'd expect her to be hit with a lawsuit. Plus, in the midst of her uncontrollable spiral, there is an underdeveloped subplot centered on the relationship between her and her quiet mom who she often complains about which doesn't really end up meaning anything.
Overall, How to Build a Girl gets its rebellious wit and charm due to Moran’s script and delightful central performance by Beanie Feldstein, but adds little endearment to the coming-of-age teen comedy genre. Rating: 3/5 | 67%
