Short Girl Reviews 'Tall Girl'

Twitter is always angry about something, a couple of weeks ago the memes began over Netflix's new film, Tall Girl. The premise is basic enough, a freshman in high school is taller than everyone in her class. She's been made fun of her entire life for it and she's obsessively self conscience about her height. So last night when I was deciding what to watch before I went to bed, I decided to settle in and see if Tall Girl would be as bad as Twitter made it seem.

Jodi is a melodramatic freshman in high school, her two best friends are nerdy and quirky, her father thinks she wont stop growing and die prematurely, her mom is Angela from The Office (almost exactly), her older sister is a pageant queen, and she has a gorgeous popular girl bully. It's all the trappings for a classic teen romcom film. It's set up all the trappings for one, the male best friend, Bunkleman, is openly in love with Jodi, despite being a good half a foot shorter than her. Her other best friend is a spunky black girl who is interested in fashion design and is always trying to hype Jodi up—in all honesty I can't remember her name, it's like they barely even said it in the movie.

The film was so predictable that I was guessing lines before they were spoken. The thing is though, Teen RomComs aren't supposed to be unpredictable and twisting and turning. It's obvious that Jodi is going to end up with Bunkleman despite Stig's entrance—the new, hot, taller-than-Jodi, Swedish exchange student who is seemingly perfect for her. The only reason they don't end up together is the classic, lie about leading on the unpopular girl at a party in front of everyone to seem cool trope. Bunkleman stands up to Stig, the Swede, and gets a black eye in the process.

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with this movie. It's a basic teen romcom, and while some would say it's a film that is conflating being tall with being in other minority groups I don't really think that's what's happening here. It's just a basic RomCom with basic characters and a basic plot.

Quite frankly my biggest pet peeve with movies like Tall Girl is making the setting a prominent and recognizable city and then doing nothing to show us the city or making it realistic that these people live there. I find it hard to believe that not a single person who goes to this school in New Orleans, lives in New Orleans, has a classic New Orleans accent or even just a southern accent. We also barely see the city, the most we see of the city is a random high school homecoming parade.

If I could change one thing about this film I would have made Stig a woman and the main plot would have been GAY. This could have been a great coming of age gay film. For a moment when Stig first made his appearance in the film I thought that he was a woman. I got really excited at the prospect of Jodi falling in love with the new foreign exchange student who didn't fit her perfect boyfriend list because the new exchange student was a girl! Alas, we didn't get a wonderful gay teen romcom, just a basic straight one with a slight twist.

My final thoughts? Honestly, it's not that bad. Yeah it is slightly obnoxious and overdramatic. The main character Jodi makes it seem that being a tall girl is probably the worst thing to ever happen to a person, but that's what teenagers are like! They're overdramatic and selfish and caught up in their own insecurities! It's not as bad as everyone mocked it for before even seeing it, but it's not all that great either.