It's a simple enough idea for a movie. Regina Hall
plays Jordan Sanders, the tyrannical boss of a phone app company of some sort.
Issa Rae plays April, Jordan's put upon assistant, looking for a promotion.
After a run in with some "black girl magic", one morning Jordan wakes
up for find that she's 13 again, played by Marsai Martin*. From there, it's a
lot of antics. Young Jordan has to get enrolled in middle school: the same one
she was ridiculed in the first time she was 13. April has to hold things
together at Jordan's company in Jordan's absence and deal with a big client
expecting a pitch. Mixed in is a lot 13 year old Jordan doing and saying things
that only an adult should do or say.
*In hindsight, I realize that this is more of a
reverse 13 Going On 30 than
a reverse Big, but I'm taking my cue from the title of the movie.
As I mentioned, I was rooting hard for this movie,
because Regina Hall, Issa Rae, and Marsai Martin are great. Regina Hall is
simply always good. Since she stopped making Scary Movies or other bad
genre parodies, I can't think of a performance of hers I didn't like. She was a
scene stealer in About Last Night. She was the glue that held Girls
Trip together. She deserved Oscar attention for her work in Support the
Girls. She almost makes the broad writing for Jordan work in this. It's not
meant to be a subtle performance. Issa Rae is immediately likable. I've only
caught some of her HBO show Insecure, but she jumped off the screen
quickly in that. And I've seen Martin for years on Blackish, where she
outpaced the rest of the younger cast with her comic chops. She plays mean
well, which makes this a fine role for her.
Most of my issues come down to the screenplay. It's
a mess. Sloppy pretty much everywhere. And I don't mean the mystery of how
Jordan gets turned into a 13 year old. That's the one big leap I'm willing to
give the movie. I don't need that explanation any more than I need to know why
Bill Murray keeps reliving Groundhog Day. It's the rest of the script
that bothered me. I want to underline this point as much as I can: I don't have
any problem with the fact that it makes no sense that she's little. It's just
about everything else that I have an issue with. For some reason, the movie
sets a 48 hour timeline early on that forces way too much plot too happen far
too quickly. If I did my math correctly, in a single morning, Jordan discovers
that she's little, gets Child Protective Services called on her, gets enrolled
in a school, and becomes that class reject - All. Before. Lunch. The next day,
there's time for her new friends to try out for a major school assembly, ditch
school and go back to Jordan's apartment, and still make it back for the major school assembly. Any attempt to put
together a timeline for this movie is a fool's errand. There is no reason why
they couldn't just give the story a week so it could breathe.
The way some scenes are cut together don't even make
much sense. In one scene Jordan and April are having a fancy meal together,
then, for no reason, it cuts to them putting on an impromptu karaoke performance
in the middle of the restaurant. I think the implication is that 13 year old
Jordan got drunk on wine, maybe. There's another laughable cut that comes to
mind. April is nervous about a meeting she has to run in Jordan's absence. Her
coworker (the one she's absolutely going to be dating by the end of the movie)
tells her she'll be great if she just acts like herself. It then cuts to the
very end of the meeting, with coworkers telling her how well she just ran the
meeting we didn't see. It's an incredible example of telling rather than
showing. The movie is lousy with narrative shortcuts like that or situations
that require people to act in ways that no human ever would.
I'd forgive a lot more of this if the movie made me
laugh more. The brand of humor just didn't work for me. Hall reverts back to
the broad kind of humor from Scary Movie that I've never liked. Issa Rae
is asked to be more affable than funny. I think the movie was relying heavily
on the sight gag of seeing Marsai Martin doing adult things to bring the
laughs. There's a misunderstanding about what makes that funny though. Kids
acting like adults is funny when they are effective. Seeing a preteen boss
around people 3 times her age is funny when she's on their level. Martin
flirting with her teacher, played by Justin Hartley is funny, because she's
addressing him as her equal and he doesn't know how to process that. Or, on Blackish,
Martin plays Diane. Her feud with her dad's coworker, Charlie is funny because
she has the upper hand on a grown man. Most of Little is Martin trying to
act like an adult and not being effective at it. She tries to act entitled
getting coffee and the other people in line belittle her. That's not as funny
as if she does that and controls the room.
And the movie ends with a freeze-frame voice over. Seriously,
who thought that was needed?
Little is
by no means unwatchable. It has enough interesting performers on screen at
any given moment, even if it's Rachel Dratch, Mikey Day, or Tracee Ellis Ross
(voice-only) in small roles, that I never got bored. I chuckled a couple times
and it zips along at a nice pace. It never forgets that it's a comedy, even
when the jokes aren't working. Most of my disappointment is that I thought it
had potential to be so much better.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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