Plain and tall
Next week, Netflix will premiere what is certain to be one of its most audacious boondoggles of all time: the sequel to their 2019 original film Tall Girl. But one cannot simply walk into Tall Girl 2 if one does not have the proper context. Luckily for you, I am here to provide that lest you feel the need to actually sit down and watch Tall Girl, which I emphatically do not recommend (frankly, you’ll get the gist of the experience by watching the trailer, which plays like an SNL parody). Just kick back, relax, and let the professional do his job.
Tall Girl follows the harrowing tale of Jodi Kreyman (Ava Michelle), a teen girl who is 6 foot 1 1/2 inches tall. Imagine! Now, before we dive into the ludicrous depths of the plot here, I would like to acknowledge that there is a legitimate stigma to being an extremely tall girl, especially in an American high school where not everyone has hit puberty at the same rate. In the heterosexist, extremely binary society we are all asked to squeeze ourselves into, the expectation is that boys are taller than their girlfriends, because if they’re not that makes them the woman, and women are bad. That’s a legitimate issue that a movie could tackle if it thought about it for three seconds.
The makers of Tall Girl did not take that time, unfortunately. The film opens with a monologue that rivals Love, Simon for infuriating privilege. I was going to paraphrase, but I’ll just drop the actual line from the film right here: “You think YOUR life is hard? I’m a high school junior wearing size 13 Nikes. Men’s size 13. Beat that.” She says this - I kid you not - while walking down the hall of Ruby Bridges High School. It’s truly fascinating how far the film went out of its way to make sure it was as tone-deaf as possible. The script can not imagine anything more challenging than being tall and a girl, perhaps because the cast at this New Fucking Orleans high school is so lily-white it burns your corneas, and the only two major characters of color only exist to comment on how tall Jodi is, positively or negatively. I’m not sure where that fits into the racism Bechdel test, but it’s bad, folks! There are literally more Black people on the soundtrack than in the film.
Anyway, there’s a plot to Tall Girl, somehow. Jodi has a childhood best friend named Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck), who is this film’s abortive attempt at creating a Duckie for Gen Z. She isn’t interested in him because he’s short and she wants a boyfriend who is taller than her. She doesn’t seem to mind that Dunkleman is a rancid incel who approaches her with a new pickup line every morning, carries around his books in a milk crate to be forcibly quirky, and in every second of every day makes it clear to Jodi that he is only friends with her because if he bribes her with enough smoothies she might fuck him someday.
Enter Stig (Luke Eisner), a Swedish exchange student who is tall and blonde and model handsome. Oh, and Dunkleman’s mom signed up to be his host family without telling her son, as one does. Cue the drama! Jodi battles with popular girl Kimmy (Clara Wilsey) over Stig’s heart with the help of her beauty queen sister Harper (Sabrina Carpenter), while Dunkleman watches from the sidelines waiting for his moment to strike.
There’s a reason I tend to focus on plot rather than filmmaking technique when I review these Netflix original movies. That’s because it’s all they ever have to offer. As much as some of these films are bad-good gems, it’s almost never because of technique, which is usually only ever applied to curating a purposefully bland aesthetic where everything is shiny and well-lit and calling it a day. There’s nothing to say about what’s going on behind the camera here, except that there aren’t enough shots that actively do something interesting to highlight Jodi’s height, which is literally the thesis of the movie. One shot late in the film shows Jodi contorting herself to cram into her own bed, which accentuates her general discomfort and inability to fit into a world that wasn’t built for her and I was shocked because I had literally briefly forgotten it was possible for a film to tell its story visually.
I will give Tall Girl credit for being aesthetically bad in two ways at least. First is the library set where the books behind the characters are grouped by color. Now, that might fly in, say, a Baz Luhrmann film, but for an even semi-realist school library it’s pure madness. There’s also the loopy costume design of the outfit Jodi wears to the obligatory Homecoming Dance climax, an awful cerulean suit with a ruffled Edwardian collar that boggles the mind. But that’s kind of it.
Another reason it’s hard to focus on anything other than the plot in Tall Girl is that it’s so irresistibly repulsive it demands attention, like a scab you can’t help picking. It presents a sort of dystopian fantasy world where humor is replaced by sub-Sex and the City puns like “I always start class on a high note” or “Taylor Swift? More like Taller Swift” and Jodi’s father (played, for some reason, by Steve Zahn) makes it clear he thinks her six-foot height means her heart is going to explode at any moment. It speaks to the discombobulated screenwriting process that the only genuinely funny line - Harper’s response to a pageant interview question - is completely out of character and neither matches the tone of the film nor legibly interacts with any element of what comes after.
Before we go, I need to express the thing that most makes me want to shoot Dunkleman into the sun, but it is a spoiler. So if you care (which you shouldn’t), please skip to the next paragraph: OK… That milk crate he so quirkily carries his books around in? In the finale, it is revealed that he carries that around so he can stand on it in case Jodi ever wants to kiss him. He has done this for years. Forget the fact that he’d have to dump all his school supplies on the floor to make this happen, this is truly unhinged behavior that Jodi (who has just decided she loves Dunkleman because he punched another boy to defend her honor - great choices, Jodi) rewards by kissing him rather than running away screaming in the opposite direction. Did I mention that she woke up that morning with him caressing her hair in her own bedroom because her sister let him in?! Dunkleman is a menace to society, and that milk crate reveal is so repulsive that it kind of swings the film around to good-bad right in the final inning, if the “good-bad” umbrella includes your skin crawling right off your bones, never to be seen again.
Tall Girl is a fascinating film to talk about, which is the only reason I’ve seen it twice (never again). However, it’s an abhorrent process to actually sit through it, which is why I hope what I’ve said here has convinced you to never ever even consider clicking play. If you decide to, I demand you take to the comments section to share your experience with me immediately, but this document absolves me of any damages.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Tall Girl follows the harrowing tale of Jodi Kreyman (Ava Michelle), a teen girl who is 6 foot 1 1/2 inches tall. Imagine! Now, before we dive into the ludicrous depths of the plot here, I would like to acknowledge that there is a legitimate stigma to being an extremely tall girl, especially in an American high school where not everyone has hit puberty at the same rate. In the heterosexist, extremely binary society we are all asked to squeeze ourselves into, the expectation is that boys are taller than their girlfriends, because if they’re not that makes them the woman, and women are bad. That’s a legitimate issue that a movie could tackle if it thought about it for three seconds.
The makers of Tall Girl did not take that time, unfortunately. The film opens with a monologue that rivals Love, Simon for infuriating privilege. I was going to paraphrase, but I’ll just drop the actual line from the film right here: “You think YOUR life is hard? I’m a high school junior wearing size 13 Nikes. Men’s size 13. Beat that.” She says this - I kid you not - while walking down the hall of Ruby Bridges High School. It’s truly fascinating how far the film went out of its way to make sure it was as tone-deaf as possible. The script can not imagine anything more challenging than being tall and a girl, perhaps because the cast at this New Fucking Orleans high school is so lily-white it burns your corneas, and the only two major characters of color only exist to comment on how tall Jodi is, positively or negatively. I’m not sure where that fits into the racism Bechdel test, but it’s bad, folks! There are literally more Black people on the soundtrack than in the film.
Anyway, there’s a plot to Tall Girl, somehow. Jodi has a childhood best friend named Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck), who is this film’s abortive attempt at creating a Duckie for Gen Z. She isn’t interested in him because he’s short and she wants a boyfriend who is taller than her. She doesn’t seem to mind that Dunkleman is a rancid incel who approaches her with a new pickup line every morning, carries around his books in a milk crate to be forcibly quirky, and in every second of every day makes it clear to Jodi that he is only friends with her because if he bribes her with enough smoothies she might fuck him someday.
Enter Stig (Luke Eisner), a Swedish exchange student who is tall and blonde and model handsome. Oh, and Dunkleman’s mom signed up to be his host family without telling her son, as one does. Cue the drama! Jodi battles with popular girl Kimmy (Clara Wilsey) over Stig’s heart with the help of her beauty queen sister Harper (Sabrina Carpenter), while Dunkleman watches from the sidelines waiting for his moment to strike.
There’s a reason I tend to focus on plot rather than filmmaking technique when I review these Netflix original movies. That’s because it’s all they ever have to offer. As much as some of these films are bad-good gems, it’s almost never because of technique, which is usually only ever applied to curating a purposefully bland aesthetic where everything is shiny and well-lit and calling it a day. There’s nothing to say about what’s going on behind the camera here, except that there aren’t enough shots that actively do something interesting to highlight Jodi’s height, which is literally the thesis of the movie. One shot late in the film shows Jodi contorting herself to cram into her own bed, which accentuates her general discomfort and inability to fit into a world that wasn’t built for her and I was shocked because I had literally briefly forgotten it was possible for a film to tell its story visually.
I will give Tall Girl credit for being aesthetically bad in two ways at least. First is the library set where the books behind the characters are grouped by color. Now, that might fly in, say, a Baz Luhrmann film, but for an even semi-realist school library it’s pure madness. There’s also the loopy costume design of the outfit Jodi wears to the obligatory Homecoming Dance climax, an awful cerulean suit with a ruffled Edwardian collar that boggles the mind. But that’s kind of it.
Another reason it’s hard to focus on anything other than the plot in Tall Girl is that it’s so irresistibly repulsive it demands attention, like a scab you can’t help picking. It presents a sort of dystopian fantasy world where humor is replaced by sub-Sex and the City puns like “I always start class on a high note” or “Taylor Swift? More like Taller Swift” and Jodi’s father (played, for some reason, by Steve Zahn) makes it clear he thinks her six-foot height means her heart is going to explode at any moment. It speaks to the discombobulated screenwriting process that the only genuinely funny line - Harper’s response to a pageant interview question - is completely out of character and neither matches the tone of the film nor legibly interacts with any element of what comes after.
Before we go, I need to express the thing that most makes me want to shoot Dunkleman into the sun, but it is a spoiler. So if you care (which you shouldn’t), please skip to the next paragraph: OK… That milk crate he so quirkily carries his books around in? In the finale, it is revealed that he carries that around so he can stand on it in case Jodi ever wants to kiss him. He has done this for years. Forget the fact that he’d have to dump all his school supplies on the floor to make this happen, this is truly unhinged behavior that Jodi (who has just decided she loves Dunkleman because he punched another boy to defend her honor - great choices, Jodi) rewards by kissing him rather than running away screaming in the opposite direction. Did I mention that she woke up that morning with him caressing her hair in her own bedroom because her sister let him in?! Dunkleman is a menace to society, and that milk crate reveal is so repulsive that it kind of swings the film around to good-bad right in the final inning, if the “good-bad” umbrella includes your skin crawling right off your bones, never to be seen again.
Tall Girl is a fascinating film to talk about, which is the only reason I’ve seen it twice (never again). However, it’s an abhorrent process to actually sit through it, which is why I hope what I’ve said here has convinced you to never ever even consider clicking play. If you decide to, I demand you take to the comments section to share your experience with me immediately, but this document absolves me of any damages.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: netflix originals
