Tall Girl movie review: Big on Promise

Agreed, teenagers can be super mean–teenage bullying in the physical and virtual world has often taken serious dark turns, and ‘Hows’ the weather up there’ can’t be a greeting that you look forward to, and sure boys will initially be intimidated by a six ft plus frame and first dates might be difficult to get, but then what? Who amongst us was completely satisfied with the way we looked in high school?

Jodi’s height would have ensured that she had a head start in sports in high school — if she so chose — but her high school has no sports. She apparently is a gifted pianist, but once during a class performance she is called ‘taller Swift’ and poof, she stops playing the piano. The film is set in New Orleans, but we are only taken through the best locales of the French Quarter, and the art district. We never see the shadier parts of the region, or where Hurricane Katrina’s damage is still visible. Plus, no one in the cast has a southern accent. Wonder why?

Tall Girl plays on the usual tropes and clichés— a male, goofy best friend, a beauty pageant winning elder sister, and a super hunky foreign exchange student, who is, yes, taller than her. Added to the mix is Jodi’s ultra-confident female best friend, Fareeda, who has pink braids. There is a love triangle, or a quadrangle, or wait it’s a hexagon. It’s all muddled and it all comes to head at the homecoming dance. There is a big speech in the end given by our heroine, wearing a blue-tuxedo and six-inch-heels, and it just feels insincere, unnecessary and borderline preachy.

With so much happening around the body positivity movement, where even the big bad fashion world is endorsing and celebrating different body types, Tall Girl could have been a timely intervention. But what we have here is a lazy execution of an idea. Teenagers in America and the world over have far graver problems to deal with. But in the movie, it’s reduced to a few comments here and a few cancelled dates there. Skip this lecture and go for lunch instead. Or dinner.