source

Hello! Through being sick and having a broken laptop, I have missed out on a few review days, while also having watched a fair bit of movies. I will be catching up a bit, so you can expect more than one review a week - not just movies, but also a series or two will make it in the next few weeks!

As seemingly usual, this review will also be about "one of those" movies. Something to watch with your significant other while needing to take a short break from life - maybe even something to have in the background while cuddling, having dinner or whatever else you might be doing. The movie in question is Tall Girl 2 - a sequel of Tall Girl (duh!). There will be some spoilers (I guess) of Tall Girl, but not too much - and it's not really the kind of movie where it is SO IMPORTANT to follow the whole plot the whole time.

Synopsis

source

The movie conveniently starts by reminding us what happened in the Tall Girl. This is quite nice, as in general you do not have to have watched the first movie in order to understand what is happening here - some of the characters will not be known to you, but overall you're not missing so much if you haven't watched it.

The main character is Jodi, the titular tall girl. In Tall Girl, she struggled with multiple issues that all stem from being tall as a girl - which causes her to be a little bit of an insecure mess. In the sequel, it is a little different: she now feels good in her body and is on good terms with her height. She is in a happy relationship, has great close friends and a loving family.

Obviously, this does not last long at all. In a slight twist from the first part, most of the issues do not come directly from her height. Instead, she has many other problems, mostly relating to a lack of self-confidence, with a voice inside her head continuously trying to bring her down by telling her she is simply not good enough for whatever she is attempting to do at the time.

My Opinion

Being a short guy, Tall Girl 2 is pretty far from addressing anything that I have ever come close to experiencing - I am neither tall, nor a girl. That said, I do understand the need for representation in movies and series. One of my girlfriend's best friends is a girl at least 10-15 centimetres taller than me and she's been so excited to watch both movies. What's more, at the end she concluded that this was a movie she wishes she saw when she was younger, as it showed problems that she herself struggled with.

There is a lot of focus on diversity in the movie scene - which is fantastic. We often focus on ethnic, racial and sexual diversity and that makes me really happy as I believe everyone should be able to feel at home on this beautiful planet - not like an outcast. That said, it is also a time where we tackle the "less obvious" diversity - guys get to see it's okay to be emotional, we get more plus-size leads and representation in general in the media (thanks, Lizzo), even just dressing out of the "norm" is becoming more and more acceptable (hell, even I stopped wearing only black all the time!). The Tall Girl movies are a great fit here - aimed at showing younger tall girls that there is nothing bad in being tall and they should not feel like an outcast due to it.

That was a bit lengthy and said nothing about the movie, so how about I actually talk about it with my unmatched pedigree. Tall Girl 2 is trying to continue what the previous movie did. It goes into the head of a young and insecure girl and - to my knowledge - portrays most of the insecurities in a realistic way. She does not overcome them easily at all and even when she does - it is always a struggle. Jodi's relationships with people seem to make sense, the dialogues are acceptable and the way that she is developed throughout the 97 minutes of the movie is okay as well.

That said, I think the movie overall was simply bad. I know I just wrote 3 fairly positive paragraphs, but a lot of that was for two reasons: the issue it is tackling and because the first one was actually quite a nice movie. Tall Girl 2 is a disappointment in comparison and while IMDB lists it as only 0,5/10 worse.. It is way worse in my eyes.

I said Jodi as a character made sense and her dialogues were fine - well, I can't say that about pretty much anyone else. While Tall Girl had a pretty nice cast of characters, here it is as if someone forgot anyone but Jodi could be likable. The amount of cliches, combined with a pretty horrible show of what a relationship should look like just doesn't let me say this movie was any good. Honestly, Dunkleman and Jodi are a ridiculous couple - it already felt weird in the first one, but here.. it's just not okay.

The movie is a sequel to a story targetted at a pretty specific audience - but it completely skips the subject. It covers a generic lack of self-confidence that is bathed in a soup of unnecessary drama, cliches and toxicity. I liked the first one despite quite mixed reviews, but I cannot fathom why anyone thought making this sequel made sense. Seriously, if something doesn't seem like a good idea - just don't go through with it.

Closing Words

Tall Girl 2 is disappointing. It is a movie made to pass time, while also trying to tackle issues - sadly, it forgot what those issues were supposed to be. I watched it and I didn't turn it off in the middle, so I guess you could say it's acceptable - but I think I just have a pretty high tolerance.

Sadly, I cannot promise that my next review will be more positive - as I have been through a weird spiral of watching mind-numbing Netflix productions with my girlfriend as a background noise while eating dinner or spending evenings on the couch.