Tall Girl – Film Review

Tall Girl is a Netflix Original romantic comedy film directed by Nzingha Stewart, starring Ava Michelle, Griffin Gluck, Luke Eisner, Sabrina Carpenter, Clara Wilsey and Anjelika Washington. The film follows Jodi Kreyman, a self-conscious 16-year-old girl who is more than 6ft tall. With most of the boys in school being shorter than her, Jodi has no interest in any of the boys at school, that is, until an exchange student from Sweden named Stig Mohlin catches Jodi’s eye and everything changes.

Now first things first, this film is terrible. It isn’t funny and a lot of the characters are two-dimensional cliques. We have the dumb parent that is too busy trying to objectify his daughter’s height and hasn’t tried to connect with his daughter emotionally. We have the best friend who seems like a token black character and always magically appears when the main character needs moral support. We have a bully girl who seems perfect, yet has been effortlessly picking on the main character for years, and the main character lets her. We have the guy friend who purposefully sabotages the main character’s chances with the guy that she has feelings for, who then goes on a date with another girl.

We even have a Swedish character played by a young man who is clearly not a Swedish actor, providing a terrible, awful attempt of a Swedish accent. And last by not least, we have the gullible, self-pitying main character who has a strange issue with being tall (and I can’t imagine why because supermodels are normal incredibly tall and pretty, and this character isn’t exactly unfortunate looking), who is stupid enough to answer private numbers. I mean, who does that?

I suppose the only realistic part of the film, despite the oddness of it all, is the sister relationship between Ava Michelle and Sabrina Carpenter’s characters Jodi and Harper with their bonding, Harper providing her younger sister tips on boys and dating. Sibling relationships are always adorable, sweet and kooky as hell. This was the only relationship in Tall Girl that was believable. Also, the small snippet of shade between Harper and her sister’s bully Kimmy is amazing, even if only for a second.

Tall Girl is ridiculously unbelievable. Is everyone else in this film under five feet tall? There is no way there would be only one super tall person in school, with everyone else being a similar height. Statistically it would be impossible. Okay, so I admit the ‘milk crate’ idea is pretty damn cute, but it’s not enough to make this film a good movie. I suppose if you are curious to watch this film, you can. But even then, it’s probably a big (or should I say ‘tall’), cringy waste of time.

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