Movie Review Little

Little (2019) 

Directed by Tina Gordon 

Written by Tracy Oliver, Tina Gordon

Starring Issa Rae, Regina Hall, Marsai Martin, Tone Bell, Mikey Day 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 12th, 2019 

Little is a complete mess! This comedic reversal of the dynamic from the seminal 80’s comedy Big, is so undercooked I became more than a little nauseous while watching it. Little is a remarkably sloppy movie that repeatedly muddies what should be a simple notion of a plot. Take the protagonist and put them in a strange, fish out of water scenario, in order to learn an important lesson about being a better person through being kinder and more open hearted, realize the error of their ways and all is well in the world. This isn’t rocket science, so why did the makers of Little screw it up so bad?

Little stars Regina Hall as Jordan, a tech mogul… I think. Jordan’s business doesn’t make sense. She develops apps but then she has a client for whom she develops apps or games or… this is a good example of the sloppiness I mentioned earlier. Jordan is the boss from hell to her assistant April (Issa Rae) as we learn when April wakes up in the morning to Jordan screaming on the phone about how her slippers are more than 53 inches from her bed forcing her to stretch to reach them. Solid establishment of Jordan’s crazy and part of the lesson the character should learn or would learn if Little were a good movie.

The film goes hard after girl power-girlboss puffery and then badly subverts it. Jordan is all about how she did everything on her own and is an independent mogul. And then the script assigns her a client character, an overgrown man-child, who bosses Jordan around and controls her company with his whims. When he decides he may leave for another firm… again this company makes apps, they’re not a marketing firm(?), she is forced to grovel to keep him. The movie spends time establishing Jordan’s independent cred and then immediately upends that persona because the plot needs a pseudo-villain. Why wasn’t Jordan a villain enough on her own?

Quick question? How is Jordan a great businesswoman and developer if her entire company rides on the whim of one dopey white guy? Where is the empowerment and girlbossery in that? Worse yet, and to really underline the point, the movie doesn’t even need this plot. When we reach the end of the movie, this plot does not matter in any way. This adds nothing to the movie as the whole plot could easily exist without the d-bag white guy character.

So, with the company on the line in a dreadful plot twist, we watch Jordan emotionally and physically abuse her staff in a meeting. After the meeting, as the shell-shocked subordinates slink away, Jordan is confronted by someone who doesn’t work for her, a little girl with a magic wand. The little girl points her wand at Jordan and wishes for her to be little so the girl could stand up to her on behalf of her put upon staff.

The following morning, Jordan once again cannot reach her slippers. She’s been shrunk back to her 12 year old self, an afro-puff wearing, bespectacled, waif, played by Blackish star Marsei Martin. She’s still Jordan, she’s still bullying and arrogant but now in the body of a 12 year old girl. She manages to convince April of what is going on and the convoluted plot then magically introduces Rachel Dratch in a cameo as a DCFS worker who orders that Jordan go to school.

The plot is just sort of forced around into Jordan going to her old Junior High School where she was once bullied terribly. The journey is supposedly now about Jordan overcoming the trauma that turned her into an unfeeling monster but the comic driving force of the movie is Martin as mini-Jordan being as bitchy and extreme as adult Jordan, but as a child so where does the lesson come in?

It gets worse when Jordan befriends a group of unpopular kids and turns them into status obsessed, Instagram addicts and urges them not to be themselves. Now the plot for a time becomes a slobs versus snobs comedy with Jordan eager to turn her ragtag nerd friends into a hot new clique and showing up the school bully, a fellow status obsessed pre-teen, cheerleader. The lesson of this plot is the way to beat a bully is to be a better looking, more popular form of bully.

Eventually, we are to assume that Jordan has learned a lesson because she allows herself to have fun with her new friends. She’s still bratty and status obsessed but because the plot wills it, she now cares for and respects April. Issa Rae meanwhile, has all the comic charm in the world and is relegated to the sidelines while the kids plot plays out from a seemingly separate movie. April’s self confidence arc, wanting to move from assistant to exec by creating her own app, is more throwaway nonsense that further muddles whatever business Jordan is running.

There is a thoughtlessness that reigns throughout Little. There is no care for any detail. There is no interest in making simple changes to the plot to make it make sense. Instead, the film barrels forward, detouring into simpleminded aspects of overly familiar plots before tumbling back somewhere near the original point of the movie. Little is irksome in how ridiculously clumsy every turn of plot is.

Regina Hall and Issa Rae deserve better than this mess of a rehash of Big. These are two exceptionally talented people who could be making incredible things and instead dedicated their time to a movie that completely let them down. It’s not their fault, they did what they could with this nonsense. I blame the filmmakers whose lack of care with the details of plot and their simpleminded dedication to familiar tropes that led them to make an absolute ugly mess of something should have worked.

Movie Review: Dog Days

Dog Days (2018)

Directed by Ken Marino

Writen by Elissa Matsueda, Erica Oyama

Starring Tone Bell, Vanessa Hudgens, Nina Dobrev, Adam Pally, Rob Corddry, Eva Longoria

Release Date August 8th, 2018 

Published August 10th, 2018 

Dog Days is an ensemble, family comedy, part-time romance, about people and the dogs who love them. It’s cheesy as the day is long but there is a particular charm to the direction Ken Marino brings to the film. That charm emanates from his terrific cast of comedy veterans toning down their act for the family set. People such as Tig Notaro, Lauren Lapkus, and Jessica St. Clair, make cameo appearances in Dog Days, and not just cameos, they have killer jokes to go with those cameos.

The plot centers on a universe of people beginning with Elizabeth (Nina Dobrev), the host of a popular daytime TV show. Elizabeth is so close to her dog that she leaves her TV on while she’s not home so her pup can laze around and watch mom on TV. Sadly, the dog is there when Elizabeth catches her boyfriend cheating on her and is apparently so broken up about the break up that he has to go to doggy therapy.

Elizabeth would like to be alone but that’s not going to happen as she is then given a new co-host for her talk show, Jimmy played by Tone Bell. Jimmy is a former football player and fellow dog lover who credits his pooch with saving his life after his football career ended abruptly. His style of winging it on the job flies in the face of Elizabeth’s buttoned up, very prepared style. Naturally, this means they are meant to be together.

There are four parallel plots in all in Dog Days. The next biggest involves Vanessa Hudgens as a coffee shop worker who begins volunteering at a dog shelter. Initially, she’s trying to impress a handsome but vacuous veterinarian but soon she begins to find purpose in working with the animals. This leads to a friendship and budding flirtation with the shelter owner, Garrett, played by the always awkward John Bass, last seen embarrassing himself deeply in Baywatch the movie.

Next up are Rob Corddry and Eva Longoria as a married couple who have adopted a young girl named Amelia. The child is sullen and distant despite the attempts of the couple to soften her up but things change when they find a lost pug. The pug becomes Amelia’s best friend and she begins to warm up to the new parents who’ve given her the dog. Unfortunately, we know where the dog came from, plot strand number 4.

Plot number 4 involves Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard as a pizza delivery boy with a bad attitude. When he delivers a pizza to an elderly man, played by Ron Cephus Jones, the elderly man’s dog gets out of the house only to be rescued by Amelia and her new family. The old man is kind and the dog belonged to his late wife. The emotional pull of this part of the story is surprisingly strong, even as it is quite admittedly pulling hard on the heartstrings.

Did I say there are four plots in Dog Days? I meant 5, there are 5 plots in Dog Days. Adam Pally plays a shiftless wannabe rocker who is tasked with dog-sitting for his pregnant sister, played by the brilliant Jessica St. Clair and her husband played by Thomas Lennon. Not allowed to have pets in his apartment, Pally is saddled with a running gag about hiding his dog inside an music equipment box and people thinking he’s transporting a body or a kidnapped person.

It’s not a particularly good gag, it earns mostly groans, though the payoff physical gag isn’t bad. Pally is terrific at playing a slothful layabout, a moocher with charm to spare. His part here is mostly as filler to the other plots but Pally is likable enough and his big puppy is cute enough that the plot doesn’t get in the way of anything and kind enhances the charm of Dog Days thanks to Pally’s inherent appeal.

There is a whole lot of plot here but it works for the most part. Many have, rather unfairly compared Dog Days to the work of the late hack Garry Marshall with his sprawling cast and nebulous plotting but that’s a rather significant insult to this movie. Marshall’s cloying, manipulative, holiday-based dreck were sloppy and earned a consistent series of ever-deepening groans before sloughed off the screen in a heap at their laugh-free conclusion. Dog Days is tighter, smarter and has actual laughs, something the Garry Marshall films only dreamed of having.

I did not expect much of Dog Days and it’s that low bar that likely has us here right now with me recommending the movie. That said, rather backhandedly, I do recommend this movie. The cast is charming and funny, the dogs are cute and it has legitimately big laughs in more than one scene. Given the landscape of modern comedy, Dog Days is a minor miracle as it provides a modern PG comedy with real laughs that don’t all require the sacrifice of one’s dignity via pratfall or bodily function humor. I personally want to give Ken Marino an award of some sort for this modest achievement but I am in the minority of positive opinions of Dog Days.