A teen turns snarky rock critic in film comedy 'How to Build a Girl'

To every girl who watched “Almost Famous” and “High Fidelity” and bears the scars of trying to shoehorn her inner self into the male protagonist's cramped psyche, “How to Build a Girl” arrives like a soothing, if imperfect, balm.

Beanie Feldstein stars as Johanna Morrigan, a 16-year-old British high school student living in a council house with her affably chaotic working class family in Wolverhampton in the 1990s. Fantasizing about romance, escape and literary greatness, she worships at the altar of Sylvia Plath, Jo March and the Bronte sisters, whose pictures — along with other heroes and sheroes — adorn her bedroom wall. Bursting with thwarted potential and an indefatigable sense of her own future greatness, Johanna winds up trying out for a job at a hip London music magazine, eventually taking on the persona of a swashbuckling “lady sex-pirate” and gimlet-eyed critic named Dolly Wilde. As a rock journalist, she must learn on the job: She can quote Ulysses, but she can't quote the Stones.

“How to Build a Girl” is adapted by British essayist Caitlin Moran from her semi-autobiographical novel, and has been directed with a quippy lightness and madcap dashes of magical realism by Coky Giedroyc. A pantheon of comedic talent — including Sharon Horgan, Lucy Punch and Michael Sheen — shows up in an unexpected gallery of cameos, and the film becomes ever livelier as Johanna adopts increasingly outlandish costumes, seemingly thrown together from scraps of Victoriana and the plumes of retired circus ponies. Her growing confidence as a writer coincides with a burgeoning interest in the opposite sex: She falls in love with a rock star (nicely played by Alfie Allen) and embarks on an ill-advised affair with an acid-tongued colleague (Frank Dillane).

Fans of Moran's Channel 4 comedy series “Raised by Wolves” may wonder why Helen Monks or another British actress couldn't have played Johanna. The answer, no doubt, lies in the arcana of film financing. Feldstein valiantly tackles the Mids accent to the best of her ability, but even her innate charisma isn't enough to make the viewer forget that it's an act.

There are moments when Johanna's meteoric ascent feels too perfunctory and wholesome to be true; but sooner or later “How to Build A Girl” exacts its comeuppance on a protagonist whose plucky self-confidence begins to sour into arrogance and cruelty. The 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.