Movie Review

Beanie Feldstein shines again in coming-of-age comedy How to Build a Girl

Coming-of-age stories tend to be sweet meditations on the ups-and-downs of being a teenager, filled with discoveries and some regrets, but ultimately with hope of a bright future for the protagonist. How to Build a Girl is your typical coming-of-age movie in many ways, but it also deviates from the formula significantly.

Johanna (Beanie Feldstein) is a 16-year-old girl with a colorful imagination and big ideas she can’t seem to envision happening due to her coming from a poor family. Her dad (Paddy Considine) is a failed musician, her mom (Sarah Solemani) has postpartum depression after giving birth to twins, and she shares a room with her brother (Laurie Kynaston).

The one thing she has going for her is her ability to write, something that eventually lands her a gig with a music magazine. Problem is, her sunny outlook doesn’t exactly jibe with the rough and tumble boys’ club, so she transforms herself into Dolly Wilde, a pink-haired, leather-clad bad-ass with a poison pen.

Set in the early 1990s and based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by screenwriter Caitlin Moran, the film has the vibe of Almost Famous but goes to some darker places. Instead of being the innocent among the wolves, Johanna’s alter ego becomes a wolf, going down a rabbit hole of meanness that brings her success but at the cost of her true essence.

Moran and director Coky Giedroyc build up a colorful world for Johanna, including a vision board on which various people and characters like Sigmund Freud (Michael Sheen), Jo March (Sharon Horgan), and Elizabeth Taylor (Lily Allen) speak to her in times of need. Johanna often marches to the beat of her own drum, and it’s when she goes against the norm that she becomes the most interesting.

The only problem with her having an active fantasy life is that it can sometimes be difficult to tell when things are actually happening or if they’re all in her head. A lot of crazy things start happening when Johanna/Dolly turns to the dark side of criticism, but it’s never completely clear if she’s truly experiencing those things or if they’re all in her head.

Feldstein, who made big strides with her parts in Lady Bird and Booksmart, is as winning as ever here. It is a bit jarring to hear her speak with a very specific British accent, but in the end she’s just as convincing as the actual British actors in the film. Considine, just by pure screen time, makes the most impact among the supporting actors, but Alfie Allen is charming as John Kite, a musician who sparks joy for Johanna.

How to Build a Girl goes to some unexpected places, but ultimately winds up in a similar spot as many coming-of-age movies that have come before. It’s a great showcase for Feldstein’s talent, but needed a bit more originality to have it truly stand out.

Alfie Allen in How to Build a Girl

Alfie Allen in How to Build a Girl

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Alfie Allen in How to Build a Girl

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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