Review: How to Build a Girl charms despite sickly sweetness

How to Build a Girl is a refreshingly feminist coming-of-age story with a plucky lead, but is ultimately too saccharine for its own good.

In How to Build a Girl, Beanie Feldstein, fresh off her breakout performances as the exuberant best friend in Lady Bird and Booksmart, finally gets a coming-of-age narrative of her very own. She plays Johanna, a bookish, over-eager teen desperate to escape her hometown of Wolverhampton and become a famous writer (although her tastes run more to Charlotte Bronte and Sylvia Plath, if her wall of literary heroes is any indication).

She gets her chance when a London outlet advertises for a new rock critic, a job she gets through sheer bloody-mindedness despite knowing almost nothing about music. Everyone take a moment to appreciate the pre-recession freelance writing economy, where apparently a 16 year old with no experience walking in off the street and leaving with a job just because she wants it really bad is a thing that could conceivably happen. (And actually did — How to Build a Girl is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Caitlin Moran, herself a teen journalist.)

But her enthusiasm only gets her so far, and after an interview with sweet, sensitive rock star John Kite (Alfie Allen),  she writes a truly cringe-inducing puff piece singing his praises and is promptly fired. She learns what every critic has had to grapple with at one point or another: It’s easier to tear things down than it is to build them up, and negative opinions will always get more of a reaction. And so Dolly Wilde, her sharp-tongued Mr. Hyde of an alter ego is born, wearing a painstakingly assembled costume that belongs in a high school production of Pippin.

Although it’s based on the misadventures of Miran, Johanna’s journey works as an exaggeration of the identity crisis that so many teens go through. It seems to posit that the only way to discover who you really are is to try new things, make mistakes, and continually readjust, tearing down and building up over and over again.

Beanie’s performance here is charmingly eccentric, if occasionally grating. She manages praiseworthy balancing act as she plays a character who says and does some truly awful things but still usually ends up on just the right side of sympathetic. Her transformation, although ultimately misguided, is one of self-discovery. It sends an incredibly important message to audiences, especially young women, that it’s OK to try and fail and try again in pursuit of your dreams, because that’s the only way to get anywhere worth going.

How to Build a Girl is not without its preachier moments. It makes no attempt to hide the fact that Johanna has a lesson to teach and knowledge to impart. The film ends with a direct address to camera as Beanie sums up everything we’ve learned, for god’s sake. It’s unabashedly saccharine but for the most part, its earnestness manages to be endearing.

What’s perhaps more interesting is the commentary on class that revolves around Johanna’s career. Despite being a teen, she becomes the breadwinner of the household, with all the pressure that entails. And her professional relationships with colleagues are colored by the fact that she comes from a working-class background, they’re all public school snobs, and they never let her forget that in their eyes, she can never hope to measure up. They operate in a very insular, restrictive circle, and Johanna may be allowed on the periphery, but no further.

It’s also a rare film about a teen girl where there is no real love interest. Sure, she has sexual partners — and one very embarrassing all-consuming crush — but her journey through the film isn’t centered on romance as an objective. So often there’s only a sense of completion or satisfaction within the narrative if it ends with the lonely, misunderstood ugly duckling obtaining a mate. Although it veers into treacly territory on more than one occasion, ultimately what redeems it is its tremendous heart and how much respect it has for the teenage girl.

Have you seen How to Build a Girl? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section!