As confounding as the character’s quirks are ... what follows is a sex-positive journey of self-discovery that’s a sweet as it is explicit.

| Jul 29, 2024

While the plot stretches plausibility, Dunham knows how to write a great scene, and the sexual meet-cute between Sarah Jo and Josh is about as grimly hilarious as they come.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2023

Beyond attempts to plumb the depths of Dunham’s psyche, it’s hard to figure out what to make of “Sharp Stick.” It’s visually stylized and compellingly strange, but it’s not clear what, exactly, it’s trying to challenge.

| Original Score: D+ | Aug 2, 2023

With Sharp Stick, director Lena Dunham turns in her best work to date - a bold and meaningful tale of self-discovery that invites us to embrace ourselves.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 1, 2023

Dunham is constantly looking for laughs and does deliver quite a few, but you never fully believe these people are living in the real world.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2023

"This new entry into her directorial canon is a lazy, borderline offensive screed that struggles towards coherence and never achieves it."

| Nov 19, 2022

Featuring a delicate lead performance by Christine Froseth, this is a smart, sometimes purposefully discomfiting comedy about taking control of one’s sexuality.

| Nov 14, 2022

Sharp Stick is strange, but the strangest things about it aren’t memorable creative choices or innovative techniques. They’re question marks. It all feels half-considered, aloof in a way that's more confusing than alluring.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Oct 26, 2022

Even as Sharp Stick deals with extremely adult material, it adopts a purposeful innocence that makes Dunham’s latest work less counterintuitive than it might seem.

| Oct 11, 2022

Even when Dunham seems intent on driving them all into a narrative ditch, it’s worth the rubbernecking.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 3, 2022

Sharp Stick could be dinged for not resolving all of its thematic threads or finishing all of the conversations it starts, but it also deserves some praise for limiting its scope.

| Sep 20, 2022

Sharp Stick went from a quirky story of an affair between a young girl and a married man to a frank portrayal of sex, human connection, and the fear accompanying it.

| Aug 26, 2022

... struggles to balance its comedic and dramatic elements with characters who rarely seem realistically grounded. The protagonist’s awkwardness extends to the film itself.

| Aug 26, 2022

There is nothing profound but there is something to enjoy within this film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 26, 2022

Lena Dunham’s latest is a biting and positive film of female sexual self-discovery and self-discovery in and of itself. It’s funny, it’s open, and it’s kind of timeless too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Viewing pornography as “a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” Dunham takes issue with disingenuous junk like Euphoria that promotes degradation.

| Aug 18, 2022

Sharp Stick does have a few funny scenes, an interesting character or three, and an uncomfortable but refreshing candidness about sex but, by the time the end credits roll, Sarah Jo’s journey is the film’s least interesting element.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 18, 2022

... The film wavers between silly and provocative, but lands in an uncomfortable tonal zone – somewhere between earnest and romantic coming-of-age story and winking, tawdry John Waters – that keeps us alert and curious.

| Aug 17, 2022

It’s nearly impossible to make anything good when the internet is telling you to kill yourself on a daily basis. The fact that Dunham persists is accomplishment enough.

| Aug 16, 2022

For a filmmaker known for her transgression, Dunham has a weird underlying conservatism...

| Aug 8, 2022