Sweet Girl
Netflix | Release Date (Streaming): August 20, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
11
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
VarietyNick SchagerAug 20, 2021
Aided by Steven Price’s enthusiastic score, Mendoza’s vigorous direction keeps things speeding along, and Momoa is such a charismatic presence — whether sensitively interacting with Rachel (skillfully embodied by Merced) or inventively snapping an adversary’s neck — that the proceedings’ lack of realism works to its advantage. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzAug 20, 2021
Sweet Girl is too long and disorganized, and often just too much, for its own good. It seems to want to be five, possibly six landmark 1990s and early aughts blockbusters at once. Read full review
60
Screen RantFerdosa AbdiAug 22, 2021
Ultimately, Sweet Girl doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel or anything, but it tries to have fun with its material nonetheless. Read full review
58
The Film StageDan MeccaAug 20, 2021
Despite its shortcomings, Sweet Girl is a fairly enjoyable watch. These are easy people to root for, no matter how complicated their actions get. Read full review
50
IndieWireKristen LopezAug 22, 2021
Sweet Girl is dumb in all the ways you expect, and yet with Isabella Merced things feel understandable. It’s just frustrating that the twist undermines her, outside of being utterly weird. That being said, if they wanted to greenlight a “Sweet Girl 2” and give Merced her due, I’ll be waiting. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckAug 22, 2021
The film’s true stars are the stunt and fight coordinators who render these clashes in visceral, mostly realistic fashion, although they eventually lose impact through their sheer repetitiveness. Read full review
50
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaAug 22, 2021
Sweet Girl is front-loaded with fun action, and it has a great performance by Jason Momoa as a widower seeking vengeance against a pharma CEO. But its story slowly loses steam, before being replaced by an entirely different movie with much sillier political messaging. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisAug 20, 2021
To be sure, Big Pharma execs make for natural movie villains these days, but this story could have used a tad more subtlety, something that was in short supply here. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRoxana HadadiAug 20, 2021
Momoa can believably howl in anguish and throw a devastating punch, but he can’t carry a script this muddled. Read full review
50
The New York TimesTeo BugbeeAug 20, 2021
For this action film, the director Brian Andrew Mendoza favors a utilitarian style. His color palette leans toward grays, blues and browns. His fight scenes are not flashy, or even particularly memorable, but they are clear, effectively conveying the necessary information about whose fist has connected with whose face. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubCraig D. LindseyAug 20, 2021
As hellaciously predictable and preposterous as Sweet Girl is, it could win over viewers nursing their own grudge against Big Pharma. Mainly, though, this is a vehicle for its star, that brawny softie Momoa. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesTara BradyAug 20, 2021
Too often this feels like a project that insists on delivering poor facsimiles of iconic scenes. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 20, 2021
Thinly etched topicality only gets the film so far (the script is very “I read an article once”) and when the action mechanics kick into gear, it’s yet more of the same with very little to distinguish it from the pack. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 22, 2021
The occasional decently-staged fight or grace note here stands out, because there aren’t many. A story this badly constructed with dialogue this stilted and characters this thin is simply beneath Momoa, at this stage. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 20, 2021
We’re not buying what the script is selling, not for a hot second. Read full review
33
The PlaylistAndrew CrumpAug 20, 2021
No one should ask Sweet Girl to be something it isn’t, namely an affecting drama about pharmaceutical evils. For one, it’s self-serious enough as is. But there’s a vast difference between self-seriousness and taking the subject matter seriously. Read full review
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