LITTLE MAN(PG-13)
1/2 (out of 5)
July 14, 2006
STARRING
Marlon Wayans as CALVIN
Shawn Wayans as DARRYL
Tracy Morgan as PERCY
Kerry Washington as VANESSA
John Witherspoon as POPS
Studio: Revolution Studios
Directed by: Keenan Ivory Wayans
BY KEVIN CARR
Listen to Kevin’s radio review…
The advertisements for “Little Man” carried the following tag line: “From the guys who brought you White Chicks.”
Hmmm… that isn’t a sterling recommendation.
I wasn’t a huge fan of “White Chicks” (to be honest, they creeped me out… haunted my nightmares). However, I saw the movie for what it was. It wasn’t great, but it had it’s moments, and sometimes it was pretty funny. And I’ve generally liked Keenan Ivory Wayans’ films, all the way back to “I’m Gonna Git Ya Sucka.”
So, understandably, I went into “Little Man” with low expectations. That was my game plan for “White Chicks,” and it served me well. I walked into the screening of “Little Man” expecting a terrible film. I figured I couldn’t be disappointed.
It didn’t work.
“Little Man” is easily the creepiest movie I’ve seen in my life. I understand the idea to do a goofy, screwball, gross-out comedy. I happen to be a fan of those films. However, something broke down in the development of this movie.
Besides being a shameless ripoff of the Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring Baby Finster, “Little Man” just seemed to be a bad idea from the beginning. At first, I thought it would have been much better to cast a deft, diminutive comedian like Tony Cox in this film. However, after sitting through the entire 90 minutes, I realize that Tony Cox is better for not having this stinker sully his good name.
The film stars Marlon Wayans as a baby-face criminal named Calvin who stands less than four feet tall. Thanks to some tremendously lousy CGI work, the filmmakers splice Wayans’ head on two little person actors. He’s just gotten out of prison, and he runs right into a jewel robbery. While on the lam, he stuffs a stolen diamond in the purse of a woman named Vanessa (Kerry Washington).
When Vanessa goes home, we learn that her boyfriend Darryl (Shawn Wayans) is dying to have a kid with her. In order to get in their house, Calvin dresses up as a baby and abandons himself on their doorstep. Darryl and Vanessa decide to bring the kid in and keep him around through the weekend before child protective services opens up again the next Monday.
The film is shaky enough up to here, but believe it or not, it deteriorates from this point on. The film soon degenerates into a hodge-podge of sight gags and gross out comedy. The actors try like crazy to make these scenes funny, but it seems so forced, I just felt sorry for them.
We get rectal thermometer jokes, breast feeding jokes and a flurry of scatological references. Most of them are just in bad taste, looking like scraps from the cutting room floor of “In Living Color.” However, other scenes become creepy and offensive. There’s a scene where Darryl strips naked and jumps in the tub with the baby. Ick!
What’s worse is a scene where Darryl and Vanessa get busy one night. In the morning Vanessa tells Darryl she was impressed he did it twice. Of course, he doesn’t remember, and at that moment, we see Baby Calvin stick his head out from the covers. Double ick! Since when is rape funny?
“Little Man” just gets worse and worse the more I think about it. It’s a bad film all around.
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