53
Metascore
29 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The PlaylistElena LazicThe PlaylistElena LazicDunham has not lost her habit of exploring taboo and shocking scenarios. But just like this new film’s fluid, low key visual style and bright, poppy production design, the coming-of-age story it presents feels so organically conceived that what would surely be completely unacceptable in another context appears to obey the film’s own perverse set of rules with warmth and a refreshing lack of judgment.
- 77Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganPaste MagazineNatalia KeoganThe script is nowhere near as tight and the characters nowhere near as well-rounded as in Dunham’s previous efforts, yet this unpolished quality is what allows the film to exist in a realm of messiness that feels alluringly unfamiliar. In fact, the ideological murkiness of Sharp Stick is one of the most rewarding things about it.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesThe Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesNone of it adds up to a coherent thesis on love or sex, but it doesn’t really need to. And there’s something thrilling about Dunham’s refusal to give her film a clear social intent. Much like Sarah Jo’s sexual dalliances, Sharp Stick is ultimately about the excitement of exploration.
- 60New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreNew York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreIt has the air of a television-show fragment, and not just because its initial entanglement feels like the stuff of a pilot, something that has to be gotten out of the way to reach the actual premise. It’s also because it introduces characters who feel like they have storylines in the wings.
- 55TheWrapMartin TsaiTheWrapMartin TsaiIt feels like Dunham hasn’t progressed much after all this time.
- 50IndieWireKate ErblandIndieWireKate ErblandAttempts to ride the film through its own uncomfortable wavelength do offer some treats, even if they all come with caveats.
- 50VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanSharp Stick, in its quick verbal exchanges, its naked sexuality, its general air of busting taboos as if they were oversize balloons, is recognizably a Lena Dunham movie. But it’s the first one of her projects in which the parts don’t quite add up, because it seems as if what we’re watching hasn’t been so much created as contrived.
- 42Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattEntertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattThe movie's final frame asks us to believe that Sarah Jo has finally, ecstatically found herself; by then, whatever reason we have for watching is already long lost.
- 40The GuardianAdrian HortonThe GuardianAdrian HortonThis awkward, misjudged, occasionally sexy film has seeds of a radical, fresh story and flashes of directorial brilliance but is hobbled throughout by the confounding decision to write her 26-year-old main character as either insensitively neuro-divergent or more sheltered child than adult.