It stars Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Sabbat, Scott Speedman, Dunham, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Taylour Paige, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

During a discussion about love and male attraction, Marilyn advises her daughters to ask a man she admires, "Do you find me beautiful?"

The couple stays in a cabin while the two lie about their whereabouts; Josh claims to have a friend commitment, while Sarah Jo blames her absence on a family emergency.

Meanwhile, without her job babysitting for Josh and Heather, Sarah Jo is depressed and anxious about not being able to sexually please her future partners; she believes her imperfect sex skills render her incapable of being loved.

In April 2020, Lena Dunham moved from London to Silver Lake, Los Angeles, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"[2] Dunham has also stated that she wanted to create a film that depicted a young woman's complicated sexual awakening without chastising or punishing her.

[2] With an all-female production crew, filming took place in secret in Atwater Village and Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, in early 2021.

According to Gravino, Froseth had come to the conclusion that, though the script never directly indicated as such, Sarah Jo, her character in the film, showed several characteristics that suggested she was autistic.

[10] In the same article, an unnamed spokesperson for the film responded to the claims with a formal statement, which read in part, "Sarah Jo was never written nor imagined as a neurodivergent woman.

The website's consensus reads: "A series of promising ideas lost in scattershot execution, Sharp Stick stands as a disappointing setback for writer-director Lena Dunham.

[15] In a Sundance review for Time magazine, Stephanie Zacharek praised Lena Dunham's willingness to depict a woman's messy, flawed sexual experiences, writing, "This is a film made with tenderness, more an exploration than a definitive statement, and a reminder that awkward sex isn’t necessarily bad sex: if anything, it’s the ultimate proof of our bewildering, imperfect humanness."

Zacharek also praised the sincerity of the film in its depiction of finding love in "a world where the Internet is better at providing the illusion of interconnectedness than it is at actually connecting us".

[16] For RogerEbert.com, Tomris Laffly awarded Sharp Stick three out of four stars, writing that Dunham "unearths a refreshing amount of humor, honesty, and sincerity" in the film.

[7] In The New Yorker, Richard Brody complimented the detail and perceptiveness with which Dunham fashioned the film's sex scenes, but complained that "the parts of the film involving Sarah Jo’s quest of sexual experience are rushed, breezed by, diminished—as is the interpersonal, emotional part that inevitably comes into play".

[6] For the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday praised the film's "candor" and sense of humor, but criticized Sarah Jo's characterization, describing her as "a naif so innocent and so unworldly that she feels less like a fully realized human than a symbol".

It doesn’t help matters that Froseth — who was roughly the age of her character at the time of filming — looks much younger than she is, and the costume choices push her uncomfortably into fetish object territory.

[18] In The New York Times, Amy Nicholson described scenes involving Sarah Jo's sexual experimentation as "too humorless for satire and too artificial to support the film’s eventual, deluded attempt to shift into a somewhat sincere coming-of-age tale".

[19] Dana Stevens of Slate referred to such scenes "disturbing", writing, "The wide-eyed enthusiasm with which Sarah Jo approaches this project is meant, I think, to be whimsically endearing; instead, I worried for her safety every time a stranger appeared at the door."

Stevens also criticized the film's approach to contrasting Sarah Jo with her adopted sister, the "twerking, boy-crazy" Treina, played by Taylour Paige, calling their dynamic "a pure story contrivance—and one that, given the fact Sarah Jo is white and Treina Black, carries with it racial implications that the script barrels obliviously past".

[20] Additionally, for InsideHook, Charles Bramesco scrutinized the "traditionalism" of Dunham's decision to write a sexually adventurous character who ultimately ends up "back into the arms of the one genuine date she actually made a connection with".