Film Review: How to Build a Girl (2020)

I realize I’m not the target audience for “edgy” coming-of-age stories like this, but How to Build a Girl is nothing to write home about. I’ll take it a step further: it’s annoying. There are no likable or even believable characters, and the predictable third act personal revelations couldn’t fall flatter if they’d been dropped off a building. Then there’s all the pedophilia. Yes, a good chunk of the “coming of age” aspect of this piece of work is that a 16-year-old girl is repeatedly taken advantage of by grown men. Didn’t anyone notice that? Or care?

Putting aside the plot’s pervy nature for a moment, How to Build a Girl (based on the 2014 book by Caitlin Moran) is scattered beyond salvation. From one scene to the next, I can’t say with any certainty that I was watching the same movie. Jumps in tone, style, and characterization impede an already dubious story, and derail any possibility of agreeable character development. When even the “nice” characters are either petty, self-serving, or vapidly shallow, caring about what happens next becomes a pointless endeavor. 

Similarities to 2000’s Almost Famous (another movie that justifies statutory rape) are easy to spot but at least that film had style and continuity. Where Almost Famous is a love letter to the power of music, How to Build a Girl is an angry text against it. Beanie Feldstein – whose brash, unapologetic style I appreciate in other movies – is wasted here. Her unique comedic finesse is diluted into caricature, which seems beneath the rising star. That, and much more, sink a film that, in all honesty, I was never going to like in the first place.