Every once in a while, a movie comes along with a premise so good that it is more-or-less a success right out of the gate. Jan de Bont’s Speed, for example, was a masterpiece the moment its hero discovered that the passenger bus he was on couldn’t go below 50 miles per hour or it would trigger a lethal bomb. Christopher Nolan’s Inception solidified its status as a bonafide Good Movie simply by virtue of it being about dream warfare, as did Ridley Scott’s Alien when he pitched it to the studios as “Jaws in Space.” But occasionally, a movie will come along that has a premise so weak that it’s nearly impossible for it to redeem itself. This is the case with Netflix’s Tall Girl franchise, a series of films about a teenage girl who is…well, very tall.
Jodi Kreyman (Ava Michelle), the protagonist of both Tall Girl and its sequel, Tall Girl 2, has been plagued by exceptional height her whole life. She’s never had a boyfriend, she does just about everything she can think of to fly under the radar and just she can’t seem to walk down her high school hallway without some smartass asking her “How’s the weather up there?” While watching the first Tall Girl, I did my best to ignore the nagging feeling that this was truly a Netflix-has-run-out-of-ideas movie, and just enjoy it for what it is, which is essentially a by-the-books teen rom-com. After all, what is the teen outcast character, really, but a catalyst for a series of social faux pas and an eventual uplifting lesson in learning to love who you are?
And in the first Tall Girl, this pretense works well enough. The film follows a semester in the life of Jodi, whose world is turned upside down when Swedish exchange student Stig (Luke Eisner) arrives at her high school. Why is this such a big deal, you might ask? Yes, Stig is very dreamy. But more importantly, he’s also very tall. The film shows Jodi stepping out of her shell to chase Stig, and, surprise surprise, also learning to love herself along the way. It’s sappy, it’s inspirational and it’s easy to watch. But in Emily Ting’s Tall Girl 2, the bad premise problem sticks out like a sore thumb. The sequel picks up where the first one left off: With Jodi making an inspiring speech at homecoming, and subsequently deciding to own her height instead of being ashamed of it. Overnight (and between the two films), she became wildly popular, and is now dating her best friend Jack (Griffin Gluck), whom she’d previously turned down because he was too short.
This setup raises a not uncommon question: How do you make a sequel out of something that was never actually supposed to have a sequel, but earned enough money that a sequel became inevitable? Since Tall Girl 2’s predecessor had such a neat conclusion and resolution, it was always going to be extremely difficult to hide its nonsensical, thin premise (a movie about a girl who is tall) behind the guise of a traditional high school movie for a second time.