Little Man (M, 97mins) Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans *
Calvin “Baby Face” Simms (Marlon Wayans) is a career criminal. Having just been released from jail, the pint-sized perpetrator is immediately back on the job.
Teaming up with his homeboy Percy (Tracy Morgan), Simms carries out a diamond heist which is set to land them US$100,000. However, things don’t go exactly to plan and with the police closing in, Simms is forced to stash the diamond in the handbag of Yuppie Vanessa (Kerry Washington).
She is busy having an argument with fiancé Darryl (Shawn Wayans) about her plans to put her career before having a family. Darryl is desperate to be a dad, something which Simms seizes on as he hatches a plan to retrieve his stolen booty.
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“From the team that brought you White Girls”. That ought to be a warning to rival “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy” or “Do not eat toner”, but yet the Wayans brothers’ antics somehow still attracted a sizeable audience to this and other dreck back in the noughties.
It all used to be so different. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans was originally the patriarch of magnificent sketch comedy In Living Colour which launched the careers of Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx and Damon “the funny one” Wayans. But sadly his mojo had long since departed by the time this came out in 2006 and his scriptwriting brothers Marlon and Darryl appeared to think the words toilet and humour were inseparable.
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If you think all Little Man’s antics sound cartoonish, you’d be right. It is actually inspired by a 1954 cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny. Which makes Little Man’s 90-minute running time about 83 minutes too long.
Little Man marked a new low, with Simms’ “adorable in a National Geographic-kind of way” baby disguise simply serving as an opportunity to trot predictable humiliations involving dirty diapers, rectal thermometers and breast-milk drinking.
He also gets to administer frying pans to the head, ogle well-endowed women and beat up a Barney-the- dinosaur lookalike (and we all thought that gag had died out in the Jurassic period circa 2002).
If you thought all these antics sound cartoonish, you’d be right. Little Man is actually inspired by a 1954 cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny. Which makes Little Man’s 90-minute running time about 83 minutes too long.
Only Washington’s (then most famous for starring in the brilliant TV legal dramedy Boston Legal) perky career woman emerges with any kind of credit. The rest of the cast struggle with their woefully written stereotypes, which include trash-talking old man, wimpy dad, sports-obsessed dad, oily mob boss and middle-aged white woman who speaks in hip-hop.
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Shawn and Marlon Wayans star in Little Man.
Of course this being an American mainstream comedy, the gross-out gags go hand-in-hand with family values. So, of course, Vanessa realises that career isn’t everything and Simms learns to love, in between having a violent bowel movement and making Grandpa eat a tainted cookie.
Creatively bankrupt (as well as Bugs Bunny, Little Man also “draws inspiration” from Blue Streak and Home Alone) this film ultimately resorts to the tried-and-tested hit to the groin – not once, but EIGHT times.
Little Man is now streaming on Netflix.
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