Tall Girl

Tall Girl ironically belittles its message with a towering case of marginalised insolence. “You think your life is hard?” narrates the eponymous skyscraper-like girl in a condescending tone as if one was participating in a selfless therapeutic course in torture. Life really must suck for her. No, seriously. I felt her solemn sadness. Being an attractive young privileged white girl with a height totalling, and this really takes the biscuit, six foot one really must take its toll. Six. Foot. Frickin’. One. Constantly getting remarks including “how’s the weather up there?” and being titled “beanstalk” shatters the confidence and then some. I’m sure. Unable to obtain high school love and succeed in life due to her colossal height. Could you imagine being six foot one? Might as well just lobotomise yourself, y’know? Just so abnormal and rare these days. Tall females apparently don’t succeed in life. Supermodels? Nope. Olympians? Who? Thank God this wasn’t called “Black Gay Jew”, as if it was treated with the same ill-mannered direction as Tall Girl, it may have been cited as a personal attack. Look, it’s a somewhat innocent approach to acquiring self-confidence amidst a wave of pessimism. But when the script hones in on stupidity like cosmetic products inspiring confidence and automatically uplifting exterior beauty, to the point where you become a different person, it’s just no! That’s not the message we should be sending the next generation! More importantly though, let’s address the pressing matter here. No one, absolutely no one, gets bullied because of their height. No one! So automatically, there’s no relation to the central premise. Never mind the mundane acting, ostentatious directing style and unhumorous dialogue. Those are just rotten ingredients in a disastrous meal. Netflix has, yet again, released another diabolically insulting high school “comedy” revolving around popularity and bullying. With a non-sensical reasoning for abuse that cements this as the worst of the year. By far. Six foot one!? Size 13 Men’s Nikes!? She’s not exactly “Godzilla” with clown shoes now, come on!

I just noticed another review on this site for Tall Girl, and I think it is the only 1-star review I have ever seen on TMDB (there are certainly a lot of them at that other movie data and review site that shall remain unnamed). I have seen valid critiques about how much is made of a person being bullied because they are tall, like that is impossible. It is perhaps overdone at least. Imagine that if Jodi played basketball instead of the piano how she would be — pardon the pun — looked up to. People would be giving her low fives after every team wind instead of asking facetiously, “How’s the weather up there?” So perhaps it is unlikely that dues to her having the wrong hobby she would be treated so poorly. On the other hand, I can also see her having some reason to feel put upon. If she managed to get to high school and basically have just two close friends, one of which always hits on her and even lies to try to get her to date him, she may not be in a great place emotionally. So maybe dial back her unhappiness and bullied state a bit. Also, I didn’t buy the idea that Stig would be thought of as the shortest and least attractive guy in school back in Sweden. But the plot relies upon that fact to explain his total change in attitude towards Jodi. They have Jodi be a nice person despite her unhappiness and unpopularity, but Stig becomes a jerk just because he is suddenly popular? Yeah, kind of lame. So yeah, the movie has problems and takes shortcuts. It doesn’t make it a 1-star movie to me, but it will prevent me from watching the sequel that came out later on. (Wait, don’t rom-coms have happy endings? They shouldn’t have sequels, should they?)

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The Movie Diorama

Peter McGinn