Greg, I’ve got a little favor to ask you. Can you review this next movie?

We meet 37-year-old Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall), the CEO of her own tech company. Jordan was bullied as a child and now believes that being a bully is the best way to be in charge of one’s life. She basically terrorizes everyone on her staff. One of her top clients needs an idea for a new big money-making app and threatens to leave Jordan’s company unless she comes us with an idea fast. One day Jordan bullies a small child, who uses a magic wand to cast a spell on Jordan, turning her into a 13-year-old middle-school kid.

Greg, Little is a pleasant little comedy that capitalizes on an idea made big by the 1988 movie Big and the 2003 film Freaky Friday. It’s the old gimmick of adults and kids switching bodies. I think it’s safe to say that those two older movies did a better job of getting the most zany fun and mileage out of this body-swap gimmick. Little isn’t a bad film; it simply isn’t crafted as well and suffers from several slow, plodding scenes that suck away the story’s momentum.

The one big way that Little outclasses those two older body-swap movies is in its message. Our hero Jordan undergoes a dark transformation in middle school, changing from a good kid who is bullied into a bad kid who adopts the role of a bully. When a magic spell sends her 37-year-old self back to her middle-school self, we realize that she’s been given an opportunity to re-do middle-school the “correct” way. As with all good heroes, Jordan needs to be humbled and acquires important self-insights from this humbling. She learns that the best way to fight bullies is not to become a bully but rather to become one’s true self and best self. In short, the best revenge is to live well.

This moral transformation parallels the one showcased in my favorite movie, Groundhog Day, a Reel Heroes Hall of Fame movie that we reviewed several years ago. Jordan’s metamorphosis from jerk to saint is an archetypal heroic transformation that we see in stories about Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Grinch in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. In our book, Reel Heroes and Villains, we discuss the idea of a moral transformation being one of the most important kinds of transformations that a great hero can undergo.

Good call on that plot hole, Greg. I was also wondering how the adults were going to explain to the school system (and to Rachel Dratch) how and why young Jordan just disappeared.

Greg, Little falls a little short of being a good movie. It’s actually not a bad film and deserves credit for delivering a good message about why bullies become bullies and what bullies can do to redeem themselves. In our Reel Heroes and Villains book, we mention that heroes transform their pain whereas villains succumb to their pain. Jordan is able to use her setback to learn something she could have (or should have) learned as a child. It’s a nice transformation story that isn’t told as well as it could have been. I give the film 2 Reels out of 5.

I’ve reviewed Jordan’s hero’s journey and found it to be stronger than the movie itself. It’s an inspiring story of learning, growth, and redemption. As such, I give Jordan 4 Hero points out of 5. The message of the story is intertwined with the hero journey, as it focuses on the process by which bullies are formed and (hopefully) redeemed. Fortunately, we don’t need a magic spell to undergo this process, but sometimes therapy can help. I give the message 3 Message points out of 5.

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