How To Build A Girl

"I went on a plane today for the first time. Do you know how amazing it was? I learned an astounding thing. It's always sunny above the clouds. However awful it is on earth if you go high enough it's always summer. It's amazing."

Flights never last long enough do they. You always have to land eventually.

1993. Wolverhampton. A dump of a city. Where dreams go to die. School's a tough place if you don't fit in perfectly and 16 year old Johanna Morrigan most definitely doesn't fit in perfectly. She loves her schoolwork which baffles her teachers and grates on her schoolmates. She afraid to approach boys meaning they all assume she's a "lezzer" and her love of the Brontë Sisters, Frida Kahlo and Sylvia Plath isn't helping matters. All she wants is a place in the world where she'll feel comfortable and not be humiliated everyday. A suggestion from her brother leads to her writing a sample music review which she sends to NME and to her surprise they like it. Within weeks Johanna's world has opened up but an eager to please 16 year old girl out enjoying life for the first time is always going to run into trouble.

For the first few minutes the accent grates. It's not exactly Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins bad but it's up there. You'll cringe and you'll squirm but eventually you'll start smiling because Beanie Feldstein's Johanna is just so damn likable. She's a force of nature, once she gets going there's no stopping her. The people she works with, the bands she meets, the singers she fancies, they all crumble under her sheer good natured-ness and eventually you will too and with that How To Build A Girl becomes a joy to watch. Add in the brilliant Paddy Considine as the type of father everyone would love to have and Alfie Allen as a rockstar who flips over all your expectations and you have a movie a lot of people are going to love.

I don't want to call it a gender flipped Almost Famous but that's a pretty decent description of it. Like Cameron Crowe's autobiographical classic from 20 years back this one is kinda based on a true story too (Caitlin Moran wrote the book this is based on and the film's screenplay too) but there's an edge here that the earlier film is missing. Johanna's youth and naivety are sniffed out instantly by the predatory journo bro's and the musicians she deals with and to get herself ahead she creates a nasty persona called Dolly Wilde who's reason d'etre is to shred all that come before her. It works (the Eddie Vedder crack is vicious) but at the same time it pushes her away from a family that loves her into the arms of an industry that will use and spit her out. It's hard at times to watch and for some people it will be a poignant reminder of the times in their youth when they changed who they were to fit in. 

Her turns in Lady Bird and Booksmart were good but How To Build A Girl really shows what Feldstein can do when she's the main focus. She's great in a story that really nails that feeling of teenage self discovery, that lightbulb moment when things fall into place. For Johanna it's the Manic Street Preachers roaring "YOU LOVE US" at her in a dingy club while her Da sips a subpar pint of plain in the background. Like the film itself it shows us the thin veneer of glamour that lets us escape the normal everyday drag for a while.

How To Build A Girl is out now to stream. It's really worth your time.