After seeing the loads of memes and posts spanning across the Internet complaining about Netflix's new original movie Tall Girl, I thought I had gotten the gist of just how bad the flick was. However curious I was about the movie, my motive to avoid and not watch it seemed validated by the overwhelming sarcastic outrage about how 'tall girls were the new oppressed group.'
Sadly, I let my curiosity get the best of me and just needed to see how this movie portrayed the tall girl experience, and compare it to my experience as a tall girl.
I'm a bit far off from the main character height (she's 6'1, I'm just over 5'8) but I felt our experiences were similar.
Just kidding.
The movie begins by introducing us to 16 year old Jodi who is shown striking up a conversation with a boy in the library. Hitting it off relatively well, the boy begins to ask Jodi if she'd be interested in going on a date when she stands up from the study table. The boy is 'harshly' greeted with the fact that she's much taller than him, and he dismisses his offer, leaving Jodi disappointed. This sets the scene for Jodi's teenage 'struggles'.
Jodi continuously laments about her height and is shown repeatedly asked "How's the weather up there?" by her fellow high school students, seemingly only accepted by her two friends: the confident fashionista Fareeda and Jodi's childhood friend Jack who has been openly in love with her since they were young.
While Jodi tries her hardest to slouch and not draw attention to herself among her peers, Jodi's world is rocked when a foreign exchange student from Sweden named Stig enrolls in her high school. As Stig is somehow the only other tall student in the school aside from Jodi, Jodi is immediately consumed with a big, fat crush.
The plot of the movie never really catches your interest despite the amount of cliches that were checked off some 'teen rom com' list and placed into the movie. The most popular girl in school, Kimmy, scooping up Stig and beginning to date him, Jodi's older sister Harper, a pageant queen, giving her a makeover to win Stig over, and Jack sabotaging Jodi's chance with Stig by convincing Stig to continue dating Kimmy for the popularity aspect, among the most prominent.
While it seems at points that Stig and Jodi might actually be heading towards some sort of relationship, both showing mutual interest in each other, Stig becomes drawn to the newfound popularity he has gained at the high school and drifts away from Jodi. At the end after Jodi has been hurt by Stig's lying about one of their interactions, Stig apologizes and asks if they can start over. In a classic twist, Jodi turns him down.
Aside from the generic plot, the characters themselves are about as deep as a puddle of water.
The consistently uncomfortable interactions between Jodi and her bumbling, ditzy parents seem to be the conjurings of someone who's never actually had or been around parents who have tall children. The best example? Jodi's parents take her to a doctor overly concerned about her above-average height at age 5 and ask for the doctor to give her growth stunting hormones. The doctor warns them about the adverse side effects and risks associated with this, one of them being infertility. Her father then turns around to see where Jodi is playing in the background and asks her if she really does want to have children someday before Jodi nods in response. Needless to say, they don't go through with the procedure.
While the writers might have aimed to portray Jack as a friend who had good intentions yet got swayed by his emotions and love for Jodi, his character was exhausting to watch. He seemed to act as the validating force for Jodi to accept herself how she is, telling Jodi she should embrace herself by doing things such as "[dating] a short guy [and wearing] high heels." He criticizes Stig, yet he himself chooses to fall into the popular group as well, leaving Jodi as the outsider. Finally, the quirky gesture of carrying a crate around in the hopes of (spoiler alert) eventually using it to climb up to Jodi and kiss her at the end of the film was almost vomit inducing.
Overall, I and most other tall girls, could not relate to Jodi's character struggles. While I'll admit I've felt insecure about my height (people do make comments about it most times when they meet me), I was never bullied or antagonized because of it. I understand the good intentions the cast and crew perhaps set out with, but when looking at the entirety of the movie, it comes off as a poorly executed 'accept yourself' teen coming of age.
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