The novel charts the journey of teenager Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein), who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde: fast-talking, lady sex-adventurer, moves to London, and gets a job as music critic in the hope of saving her poverty stricken family in Wolverhampton.... (Full plot summary below)
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The novel charts the journey of teenager Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein), who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde: fast-talking, lady sex-adventurer, moves to London, and gets a job as music critic in the hope of saving her poverty stricken family in Wolverhampton.
Leave your thoughts about How to Build a Girl.
| The Associated PressLindsey BahrBased on Caitlin Moran’s semibiographical novel, How to Build A Girl is a wickedly funny, sweet and vibrantly told coming-of-age story that feels like a teen classic in the making. |
| Film ThreatLorry KiktaHow to Build a Girl is an incredibly fun movie. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawWhat a thoroughly likeable and funny film. |
| The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeIt’s a credit to Feldstein that the wobbliness of her Wolverhampton accent never comes between us and her character. Instead, we simply get on board with her adventures, accepting her for what she is – however odd that may sometimes sound. |
| The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisLike a stone skipping on water, How to Build a Girl leaps from raunchy to charming, vulgar to sweet, earthy to airy-fairy without allowing any one to settle. Yet it’s so wonderfully funny and deeply embedded in class-consciousness . . . that it’s tonal incontinence is easily forgiven. |
| The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinAs fun as a night in the mosh pit with your best mate ... Directed by Coky Giedroyc with a fizzy vibrancy and supercharged by Feldstein's intense charisma, this crowd-pleasing comedy has smart things to say about class, sex and female identity. |
| Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesStill, it takes a special someone to sell this larger-than-life character onscreen, and to make you forgive how the galloping script glosses over some crucial beats. |
| Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattStill, there's a sort of willful energy field between Giedroyc and Feldstein that pushes the story along; the blithe, anything-can-happen thrill that comes from being young in a world where anything is possible — including the right to wreck yourself spectacularly, rebuild, and then start it all over again. |
| Chicago TribuneKatie WalshThis sincerely felt and utterly effervescent coming-of-age tale expresses a universal truth about being alive: that hopefully, you'll have the chance, and the awareness, to make and remake yourself, again and again, dusting off the old bricks you've got and forming them into something familiar but new. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayThe comedy that Feldstein and the filmmakers find in Johanna’s often disastrous attempts to become herself keeps the movie afloat; what keeps it tethered to reality is the universal drama of a young woman finding her voice without losing her soul. |
