In Sharp Stick, Lena Dunham leaves us wanting less
Dunham's latest directorial effort, an awkward sexual dramedy, delivers an unfiltered firehose of bad ideas
Film Reviews Unknown
Small-budget, character-driven festival films come and go, and most of them—even the good ones—tend to only be seen by niche audiences and then are quickly forgotten. A good thing you can say about Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick, if you must say anything, is that no one who sees this monstrosity will forget it anytime soon.
Even Jennifer Jason Leigh, one of the most charismatic screen actors of our time, is unbearable in Sharp Stick. She plays a mom to two daughters played by Kristine Froseth and Taylour Paige, who are both in their late 20s but act like teens. One is white and the other black, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder how that family dynamic came about. Consequently, the three gather in their living room when Mom blurts out “Who wants to hear their origin story?” to which all respond, “Me!!!!!” That’s the level of subtlety we’re working with here.
Had there not been a minor brouhaha during the film’s debut at virtual Sundance earlier this year, Froseth’s Sarah Jo would safely be described as a “young neurodivergent woman.” There is no explicit diagnosis of such, but her performance is an avalanche of “Oh, no, I can’t believe she is making that face.” (The producers say she is not coded to be neurodivergent.) Her story arc is, essentially, a love affair between herself and a newly discovered taste for orgasms. This is sex-positive Simple Jack.
Things begin when Sarah Jo, who works as a babysitter for a special needs child, hurls herself at the hunky father Josh (Jon Bernthal). Josh is kind of a down-to-earth doofus in a hoodie, eager to dance around and make people happy, but clearly something of a mess. (His pregnant wife, played by Dunham herself, is the breadwinner.)
Josh spends about three minutes rejecting this unusual but conventionally attractive girl who is desperate to experience sex, but is somehow completely unfamiliar with its actual lexicon or logistics. (She aids her older sister in making racy TikTok videos to profanity-laced tunes, but has no clue what the term “go down on” could possibly mean.) Josh quickly succumbs to desire and the two start boning, a development that seems to go well, at least until they get caught and Josh tosses Sarah Jo out.
But Pandora’s box has been opened for Sarah Jo, and what happens next is a purportedly whimsical romp through her sexual awakening. She watches porno on her laptop (she’d never seen any before), makes wide-eyed faces and writes down notes in block letters on a pad. “He seems mad,” she writes. “Why is this pretty girl so sad?” and “Do not want to see any wide open anus holes” are also among her observations.
She puts herself on the internet, and creates middle school arts-and-crafts-style wall decorations of alphabetized sex activities, ready to check each one off. (Whoopsie! A “blow job” doesn’t mean you blow on it!) Men quickly take her up on the offer. She also writes a lengthy note to a male porn star (Scott Speedman) which she enlists another adult industry insider (an angel played by Luka Sabbat who won’t get freaky with her without some conversation first) to pass along to him. Somewhere during this journey, some kind of uplifting message emerges about being yourself.
Watching Sharp Stick is like encountering that pain box that Paul Atreides faces in Dune, only instead of a hand it’s your entire soul. Every moment is awkward, phony, excruciating, and just so unbelievably bad.
Here’s a good time to point out that Dunham has, many times, been a magnet for unjust criticism. Girls did somewhat derail by the end, but those early seasons were absolutely spectacular. As a performer, she can dazzle on the screen. Her moment in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… is terrific albeit quick—and she contributes the only scene that feels genuine in Sharp Stick, when her character is shocked-not-shocked to discover her husband’s philandering. Even the previous high-water mark of Dunham cringe, her Sensual Pantsuit Anthem video for Hillary Rodham Clinton, features a few clever zings, plus at least one welcome moment of self-awareness. (“I wonder if I’m actually hurting her chances of winning?” Dunham muses at the end.)
With Sharp Stick, there sadly is not even a glimmer of mindfulness. It is, instead, a pure, unfiltered firehose of bad ideas, and surely one of the worst movies of 2022.
94 Comments
I remember when I almost got tossed from the site and created a huge brouhaha by suggesting the LD maybe wasn’t the generational voice TVDW thought she was. Good times.
Turns out that she really IS that far up her own ass.
What is TVDW? Dewtsche TV?
It’s the former initials of the writer/critic Emily St. James, who used to be an editor on The A.V. Club.
TV Done Worse.
I always find it amusing that the “voice of a generation” is invariably some trust-fund white girl from either LA or NY. Yes, I, too, remember when when the dress I wore to the Met Gala was totes panned the next day in NYT society pages! It’s a pain that never goes away for this *checks notes* Asian son of a blue-collar rural Aussie!
“*checks notes* Asian son of a blue-collar rural Aussie!”
This killed me. Take a star!
I told you that dress did not go with those shoes, Maul Keating!But did you listen?NOOOOOooooo!
Fyi, you’re dead naming Emily St. James.
Sorry, I don’t keep up. It was unintentional. Good to know though so I can keep avoiding her work.
I was not aware of the “St. James” bit.
This is not a thing. Whatever the person goes by now, at the time the person in question went by the name Todd. There is literally no reason to pretend otherwise, and it’s not harmful to point that out.
Yikes. St James…. might as well just name yourself Epstein Island
I don’t know if finding validation on present-era AvClub is as edifying as you’re making it out to be.
When the alternative is actual work it is. I’ll take what I can get on a Monday morning.
Hey, take it where you can get it.
“I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation” is the quote from Girls. In a weird way, LD really did capture the zeitgeist of that time of young white liberalism with that quote that still lives on and is still quoted today. And I think she was an important voice from that era. Her writing might feel a little less relevant today, but Girls was some great character work about a group of millennials lacking a lot of emotional capacity to grow. It also spoke to the unpaid internship era that populated America post recession, with a lot of millennials in some codependency with their parents. They weren’t good people but she never told us they were.
It’s hilarious how often people think Dunham was actually claiming to be “the voice of a generation” and not using that line to indicate how aimless and underserved her generation felt.
exactly, she’s actually being very self aware and humorous in that line which she wrote for her character.
As someone who sat through, I dunno, three seasons I guess?, it became apparent that the intent to make Hannah lacking in awareness or irony with that line was more autobiographical than Dunham intended.
The line is clearly intended to read as funny and a joke on Hannah in the context.That said, I still hated the show, mostly because I hated all the characters and did not care about anything they did or what happened to them. I think I had two moments in the four episodes I watched that felt real or funny to me.That she’s since revealed herself to be a narcissist (in my opinion), a racist, and an enabler of sexual assault (less my opinion and more a reading of events others have described) certainly hasn’t made me ever want to give Girls, or her, a second chance.
Thing is tho, with Dunham I think her character not claiming it was herself claiming it. She named the show ‘Girls’ after all, a pretty significant claim that she’s speaking authoritatively.
yeah also season 4 is up there with some of the best tv i’ve ever seen. she’s extremely annoying and corny IRL but her writing can be tremendous, and obviously kudos to the casting department. that show had a lot of stars in waiting.
The line itself, with the qualification, is good. And I think I had less issue with what Dunham was doing, and more with critics and fans who zealously argued that the girls represented all girls in their early 20s. My life and choices were so far from what the show portrayed, it was laughable.
When I lived in L.A. a friend and former student, who has gone on to write for a few high-profile TV shows, was talking to me about Dunham/Girls. And she said, paraphrased, “I really like that show and her writing but none of what she writes represents me at all. But I also know girls exactly like them.”
Luckily, or maybe not, the world has moved on to Sally Rooney now.
I wish it was mostly millennials suffering from the gig economy and living with parents. Cuz it isn’t. It’s way more wide-reaching than one generation.
I think it’s specifically the ones who moved to Brooklyn that depended on their parents to pay their rent.
Not being familiar at all with the demographics of Brooklyn, is this situation at all common, now or when the show was on? Seems pretty insufferable, with all the people having trouble making ends meet on their own terms in that city.
Brooklyn is the most populous borough in NYC and contains a lot of people other than hipster transplants, but the media’s focus tends to be on the specific neighborhoods where they concentrate. I’ve never been to NYC myself though and instead have to rely on the media (defined broadly enough to include Wikipedia) for such info.
Brooklyn is huge. It was accurate, but for a very small part of it.
“I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation” is the quote from Girls. The quote itself got fucked by HBO who used it in trailers. In the actual show, Dunham’s character babbles it while high on drugs and immediately retracts it once she reads the room and realizes how incredibly cringe it is.Girls was mostly self-aware how fucking obnoxious, stupid and self-absorbed the leads are and it was largely the point. It didn’t always stick to it in presentation, often presenting fairly awful or fucked up scenarios not in a neutral way but a sympathetic one (Jessa’s shitty actions throughout the series are the prime example, Hannah’s rightfully lambasted college lecturer arc is another). A good example of it is the infamous car blowjob scene that basically has Dunham’s Hannah violating a man’s consent in a scene that’s entirely comedic – which isn’t a surprise, given how Dunham has shown time and time again that she simply doesn’t understand the nuance of consent and sexual assault at all.Dunham sucks and the fact that far too few critics felt the need to point out that she’s not a good person is a problem and Girls was a very hit-or-miss show (but when it hit, it approached something magical, like with Panic in Central Park or American Bitch or even Latching), but the revisionist history around here that it was a show about white girls having it hard and not white girls being total fucking idiots is annoying. Not saying you’re doing it here, but I had to say my piece.
I would argue that Search Party did that better (and funnier).
I remember the majority of online voices sharing that opinion, so I don’t think you were quite the iconclastic freethinker you think you were.
Nah, I was honestly being a total dick, but ESJ’s breathless admiration was just too hilarious not to be. I might also have had a bit of a SA problem at the time, which is less excuse than explanation.
She’s always been incredibly divisive. Both her boosters and her detractors were way over the top in their assessments.
I was a bartender in a liberal college town at the time which is maybe why I had no patience whatsoever for her shtick since I saw some variation on it every day..
Girls was pretty insufferable in its “Look how hard it is for us affluent white girls” but after it ended Dunham really put the “look at how much I suck” train into overdrive. She comes of as a terrible person in many ways.
Wow. This assessment is almost as cluelessly self-regarding as Dunham herself! “got tossed from the site” HAHAHAHA… seriously? “huge brouhaha”Yeah, I bet you were a real rabble-rousing firestarter. eyerollforever.gif(I don’t disagree with your assessment of LD for the most part. But good lord, the hyperbole in what you wrote here…)
Un, the internet? But it did cause a little stink, I got called out in thread and threatened with expulsion and a whole argument sprang up on editorial control, trolling etc. Remember, back then the comments were pretty split between shit talking and “serious discussion”. The staff wanted “serious discussion” to further their careers and bring in a more adult readership (totally understandable) and there was a big faction happy to keep talking shit. This is about when everyone split for the boring site (whose name I forget) which tanked pretty quick. And my being called out was totally fair, I deliberately pressed their buttons by saying something crass like “she either needs to be funnier or hotter”.
Well, Jezebel would like a word with you.
Was this before or after Jez put out a cash bounty to get the unedited pictures of her in Vogue?
I do have a serious problem with the critics who couldn’t heap enough praise on Dunham— especially the ones who have otherwise made a show about being feminists, allies, etc.— just being absolutely silent about her lying to protect a rapist on her writing staff, molesting her sister, etc.I think it’s very revealing of which values they hold higher when push comes to shove, and whom they decide to hold to certain standards and whom they don’t; apparently fandom rates higher than actually being an ally to women and other marginalized people.(ESJ, of course, being one of the most prominently vocal and unfettered of those critics in her praise. I’m reminded that she once wrote a review of Manchester By the Sea that she liked it, but wasn’t sure if she “should” because “it’s about sad white men.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve seen even a tweet, much less a column, from her about “Maybe I shouldn’t have held up this sexual assault enabler as a feminist voice beyond criticism.” I guess it’s easier to examine and criticize one’s own involuntary reactions than voluntary actions. Let alone how silly I think it is to be like “Is my reaction to this movie unwoke because it’s not about the right demographic?” in the first place. Art and our connection to it does not work that way, good night!)
“lying to protect a rapist on her writing staff, molesting her sister”did you read any further into this? she was 7 years old, it’s weird behaviour, but the excerpts from the book are Dunham projecting an adult perspective onto her child self. There’s lots of problematics with Dunham, but the stories people cling to don’t have much merit.
Huh, I wonder why you completely ignored the “defending a rapist” part just so you could focus on the part you could spin and minimize. Just like all of Dunham’s defenders have done for the last decade.
She apologized, it was 2014, at least she admitted the mistake unlike most people in Hollywood. the weird obsession people have with Lena Dunham’s fuck ups is weird.
When did she apologize for defending the white man on her writing staff who raped the young black woman?When did she apologize for all the racist shit she’s said and done since then?The Dunham Defenders will pick one thing they can nitpick apart and justify and then ignore the rest of her behavior.What’s weird is that you feel the need to defend someone who defends and protects rapists.
Nice deflection, man.Have you considered being a soccer goalie?
Sorry, I’ve never liked or admired or felt anything for Lena Dunham other than exasperated contempt. She’s the female equivalent of a whinily-entitled Straight White Male DudeBro—which in any other case would count for a great deal, but in Dunham’s case just feels like a Female DudeBro…or more aptly, a Karen.
so it’s ‘the to do list’ by way of ‘red rocket’?
Sounds more like The To-Do List by way of that Sia video.
‘Sex-positive Simple Jack’ is some quality snark. Though ‘Do not want to see any wide open anus holes’ is pretty darn funny from the movie itself.Also, ‘Simple Jack’ could work as the title for a movie about a neurodivergent male’s sexual awakening.
Wide Open Anus Holes is my new band name.
Woah.
I thought it was a Creed song.
I thought it was the Creed singer.
I always say there’s no bad premise, only bad execution. But when the premise is written by Lena Dunham?
“The producers say she is not coded to be neurodivergent”Wasn’t there a whole controversy of sorts about how they contacted an autism activist about the script, and then Dunham just kinda ghosted her and claimed later that the character isn’t neurodivergent, despite leaving a lot of the (at times inaccurate, according to the activist) coding in?
Taking the opportunity to rant (not at you!), but “neurodivergent” is not something you code for, because it’s an umbrella term that includes a bunch of specific conditions – Autism, Asperger’s, OCD, bi-polar, schizophrenia, etc etc. Those people might share certain difficulties be discounted by larger society in similar ways, but you’d “code” for a specific condition (or conditions) in terms of character behavior. Kind of like Angela Basset isn’t BIPOC, she’s a Black woman, and Neil Patrick Harris isn’t LGBQT, he’s a gay man.
That’s what the linked article goes into.
The actress playing the main character reached out to the activist herself during her own research, and then Dunham said that the character is based on herself and they shouldn’t really code that shes nerodivergant when she’s not and then they got accused of doing that anyway
“This is sex-positive Simple Jack.”
This made me laugh. Well-done.
Yeah, I’ve got to say, this review was an entertaining read. It’s nice to see someone on this site who’s actually good at snark again!
Lena Dumham admitted to molesting her younger sibling in case anyone forgot
And she has had a string of pets die within a year of adopting them
And when her white writer Murray Miller raped the black actress Aurora Perrineau, she put out a statement sticking up for Miller and accusing Perrineau of lying.
“Here’s a good time to point out that Dunham has, many times, been a magnet for unjust criticism.”And many times she was a magnet for valid criticismSuch asCreating a cosmopolitan New York show in the late 2000s that was somehow even whiter then FriendsThe time she commented on how she hated visiting India and mentioned she cared more about the starving stray dogs then then people on the streetsHer long history of objectifying men of color. This include that time she ranted because Odell Beckham Jr didn’t talk to her at a party and a really cringy think she wrote about getting “yellow fever” when she was in JapanThat whole thing with her sister she wrote about in her book. The time she decided to say “fuck #metoo” and defends to defend her alleged rapist writer friend over the women accusing himSome really negative marks in her pet owner department. Including two pets dying without a year of adoptions and give one up because it was a nervous wreck of a dog. She’s got some old racist tweets floating around and she has even accused by people who knew her in college of being a hipster racist. IE ironically saying racist stuff to be funny but denying they are actually racist(Narrator voice: They are racists) Lastly her overall entitled rich whiteness that she takes no effort in suppressing. So yeah fuck her
Remember how she responded to complaints that Girls is too white by trucking in Donald Glover for what was a glorified cameo for a few minuets before she literally chucked him aside and off the show as part of a “see, I’m not racist! I casted and dated a black guy!”? That was what did it for me as far as the last straw and never made it past season two. Also how she’s best friends with the equally disgusting and horrible Audrey Gelman. The same Gelman that willingly dated that creep Terry Richardson for three years?!?
I thought I was relatively anti-Dunham, but dinging someone for being friends with someone that used to date a creep seems like a rather dumb version of guilt-by-association. Surely Lena has done enough things herself that she can be blamed for!
Is “fuck #metoo” an actual quote from her?
No that was my own spinHere is the actual quote “While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3% of assault cases that are misreported every year.”After pressure later she admitted that she had not insider knowledge of the situation at all.
All valid criticisms but not really a counterpoint to the point being made, which is that there are plenty of NOT valid criticisms.So. You know. Fun whataboutism. Even if you’re totally right to trash her for these actual things she’s done/said.
“The time she decided to say “fuck #metoo” and defends to defend her alleged rapist writer friend over the women accusing him.”*Over the very young, Black woman accusing him. It was the grossest thing and I refuse to watch anything she does after that shit.
Well if you’re going to nitpick…
I hate to say it, but…I sometimes feel worse for the dogs than people. I hear of an accident involving a person and a dog and I think “was the dog OK?”LOL.
Children of famous NYC painters are usually two headed monsters.
Loving or hating Lena Dunham feels so 2013.
(The producers say she is not coded to be neurodivergent.) Her story arc is, essentially, a love affair between herself and a newly discovered taste for orgasms. This is sex-positive Simple Jack.The description of the main character here is in stark contrast to how she was described on this same site in the post about the film’s trailer:Sharp Stick’s “semi-autobiographical” modifier is due to the movie’s focus on 26-year-old Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), who, like Dunham, had a hysterectomy to treat endometriosis. Unlike Dunham, Sarah Jo received hers as a teenager, and the trauma from the procedure left the character emotionally stunted in adolescence.I think it’s especially odd how different this review is than the post that went up about this movie right after Sundance:https://www.avclub.com/lena-dunham-returns-to-moviemaking-with-the-sundance-pr-1848407644Did the more positive review not generate the clicks and comments like a “Lena Dunham sucks” post could?
Maybe…just maybe…two different people watching the same movie might have different things to say about it within an 8 month span? Or that a Sundance preview impression by one author might sound differently than an official release review, again, by a completely different author? That’s not odd, that’s ordinary reality.
but the description of the main character is so different to the point that the review here omits very important context around that character’s behavior and state of mind. Saying someone’s traumatic experience has stunted them vs saying “this is sex positive Simple Jack” is pretty striking. One provides the female character with agency and empathy, the other sounds like exploitation
This review, or the 8 months ago Sundance first look? What context are you I insist I take in and/or out of context? What important context is everyone but you picking up on? Go on, I’ll wait.
This review.Saying someone’s traumatic experience has stunted them vs saying “this is sex positive Simple Jack” is pretty striking.Thanks for waiting for me to re-type what I did before! Appreciate the patience.
There was obviously no rush. But it still fails to explain why you feel the omission of this character’s detail is some some sort of deliberate malfeasance on the author’s part to purposely pan Sharp Sticks because otherwise they’d be somehow forced to give it a much higher grade had they not found the dialogue, writing, and acting terrible. Perhaps the author didn’t feel that traumatic backstory was conveyed enough to justify that the review felt the 26 year old character’s “…performance is an avalanche of “Oh, no, I can’t believe she is making that face.”You seem to think there’s a concerted effort to make Lena Dunham’s latest work sound cringey and insufferable. She historically doesn’t need anyone’s help in that regard.
So, again: the traumatic experience and subsequent emotional stunting provides agency and empathy to the main character and without it, this reviewer simply makes it seem like exploitation of a neurodivergent character.You seem to think there’s a concerted effort to make Lena Dunham’s latest work sound cringey and insufferable.Not at all. I hated the last seasons of Girls as much as the next person. What I think here is that a dude was super uncomfortable watching a raunchy movie about an awkward young woman exploring her sexuality in a way that the woman who wrote the other review wasn’t and this whole article smacks of it. Much of what’s complained about here is seen in other movies about an awkward young man’s sexual exploration, so I don’t see what the big deal is. I can’t be sure that’s what happened here, but given the big differences between the two reviews and not having the opportunity to watch the movie yet myself, it’s just what I think is going on.
Did you miss the context of this review taking into account an autism activist claims to have been approached to consult this movie only to get ghosted and the emphatic denial that the character was ever neurodivergent? And maybe that might provide context itself to how they viewed that film within that lens, in contrast to Katie Rife doing a Sundance first look and not official review 8 months ago while also having the context of being a completely different person with their own ideas and thoughts?We’ve been over this already. Insisting you “hated the last season of Girls as much as the next person” to establish cred no one asked you in the first place, making wild unfounded connections where there are none, and not having the self awareness to know difference or nuances either places you between Lena Dunham’s Kinja burner account and her target demographic. Best of luck to you, either way.
Gadzooks!
Watching Sharp Stick is like encountering that pain box that Paul Atreides faces in Dune, only instead of a hand it’s your entire soul. — The A.V. Club
It should be crystal clear by now that Dunham does not write characters that anyone wants to watch. I thought the first season of Girls had its moments, but I firmly believe it was because she had help. The longer the show went on, the more unlikable, unappealing, irredeemable, and repulsive the characters became. Unfiltered Lena Dunham seems to be what this movie is.
“Even Jennifer Jason Leigh, one of the most charismatic screen actors of our time”
She has her fans.
I just want to thank the AV Club for being So Brave and giving a Lena Dunham movie a D-.
Sarcasm noted.
That big gust of air was my exhale that Lena Dunham is done as a mainstream star and movies and television are better for it.More attention on Issa Rae’s projects, please.
“Sex positive Simple Jack” is probably the most creative snark published on this site since Sean O’Neal left. Bravo.