“Booksmart” and “Lady Bird” actress Beanie Feldstein has a new movie being released via VOD next month, but don’t expect the IFC Films release “How to Build a Girl,” to be even half as good as the aforementioned titles. In fact, it’s bad, very bad.
“How to Build a Girl,” which I saw last September at TIFF, has Feldstein playing a blue-collar British high-schooler that dreams of a better life without the mundane daily trivial dilemmas that come in being a sharp-minded high-schooler. What’s a girl to do to shake up her existence? Well, how about dying her hair, buying some new punk-rock clothes, and writing under the pseudonym Dolly Wilde for a rock magazine.
It’s actually even worse than it sounds.
The film has Feldstein and a cast that includes Alfie Allen, Paddy Considine, Chris O’Dowd, Lucy Punch, and Jameela Jamil barely delivering a laugh. The story is strained beyond belief, taking coming-of-age cliches and making an even bigger mockery out of them by overly stylizing every frame with unnecessary slapstick. The film was co-written and based on the experiences of Caitlin Moran, who also wrote the novel of the same name. Only a TV director (Coky Giedroyc) could make a film as preposterously naive as this one.
If you’re still interested, “How to Build a Girl” will be available via VOD on May 8th.