‘LITTLE’ NOT BIG ON LAUGHS
ISSA RAE , LEFT, AND MARSAI MARTIN STAR IN “LITTLE.”
“Little” is the opposite of “Big.” “Big” is a 1988 movie with Tom Hanks about a kid who wishes he were big, gets his wish and winds up as a kid in a grown man’s body. “Little” is a new movie about a hard-driving businesswoman who, against her will, is transformed back into her 13-year-old body.
These ideas might sound comedically equivalent, but think about it. The first premise allows an adult actor to behave like a goofy kid. With a good comic actor — like, say, Tom Hanks — that could be funny. The second premise requires that a pubescent actress behave like an adult. There’s nothing inherently funny in that.
Now it just happens that the child actress here is exceptional. Marsai Martin is 14 and seems for all the world like an adult in the form of a young teenager. Not once does she do the thing one might expect from a child actress, to play adulthood as a more strident, nastier version of childhood. Martin has poise and confidence, and she has seemed to make an intelligent study of Regina Hall, who plays the same character as an adult. Marsai not only talks like Hall — she listens like her.
But let’s be honest. As good as Martin is, we can’t stop knowing that every minute that Martin is on screen is a minute that Hall isn’t, and Hall is the big draw here. It’s Hall’s face on the poster that lures us in, and so it’s disappointing to have her vanish for as much two-thirds of the movie.
Hall plays the fabulously successful Jordan, whose fear of emotional entanglements has kept her from having a relationship. She’s cold and walled off, and she’s a mean boss at her small business, just a notch or two behind Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.” When her car pulls up at the office, her employees scatter and try to look busy.
One day, just as her career is reaching a crisis point, she becomes the victim of a magic spell, and by the next morning, two bad things have happened: Jordan has become a girl again and Hall is gone, at least for a long while. For most of what follows, Jordan, now in her pubescent
incarnation, tries to run her business and manage her life, but it’s hard, because she looks like a kid, and because no one, besides her assistant (Issa Rae), knows that this kid is actually Jordan.
The setup is mildly interesting, but here’s an example of how it’s not really funny, at least not often. One day, Jordan’s lover drops by, meets the teenage Jordan and assumes that she’s a daughter that Jordan never told him about. Jordan, happy to see him, gives him a hug, but being an adult woman on the inside, she holds that hug a little tighter and a longer than the man expects from a girl. So he freaks out and leaves.
Now perhaps that sounds hilarious in print (I doubt it). But in practice, we are very much aware that, whatever the gambit of the story, we are indeed looking at an adult actor and a very young actress. This makes the audience almost as uncomfortable as the guy fleeing the room.
Some of the comic slack might have been taken up by Issa Rae as the assistant. Imagine a situation in which the 13-year-old girl is the level-headed straight man and the assistant is the funny one — such an odd pairing might have produced some laughs. It seems so obvious: The assistant could have been the Tiffany Haddish role!
Unfortunately, the writing isn’t there. The assistant is instead made to be earnest and ambitious and very nice. So there we have it, a comedy in which both central characters couldn’t find a laugh in a clown-nose factory.
But is “Little” lousy? No. It goes along pleasantly, predictably. Here and there, a mild chuckle might escape your lips. Ten minutes later, a half-hearted titter, or perhaps a knowing chortle. Just don’t expect to guffaw, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.