The Irritation of Little Man

6/23/06

What are the words I’m looking for? Let’s see…“horrified beyond all reason” seems to just about crystallize it correctly. Yes, yes, I think I am horrified beyond all reason at the movie trailer I have just seen. I’d seen it before, you understand, and sort of rolled my eyes and muttered something bitter to anyone who had the misfortune of being in the room at the time, but on this occasion the commercial triggered loose some new response in yours truly in much the same way that swallowing a quart of diarrhea would trigger a vomit response. By a show of hands, who has seen the trailer for this steaming pile of fresh hell called Little Man?

Proving that malicious idiocy is often rewarded and that, if not dead, God is indeed in a prolonged coma, the Wayans brothers have made another movie. I am reminded of the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” because there aren’t enough curses in the whole of human vocabulary to express my utter disgust for all involved in this project. Just imagine Shawn and Marlon Wayans gagged and bound with their own intestines, smeared with honey and placed on busy railroad tracks near a fire ant hill while a blind madman administers paper cuts and jet fuel enemas to their prone bodies. That comes close to expressing it, I feel. Oh, but perhaps you’d like to know what the movie is about....

Marlon Wayans is a midget jewel thief who, in order to escape the law, poses as a baby left on the doorstep of Shawn Wayans. Forgetting for the fact that Looney Tunes did this several decades ago (Baby Finster), I’ll let the fall-down retardedness of that plot sink in. The three of you out there who went to see White Chicks should enjoy it. Perhaps Sony Pictures has finally just thrown up their hands and breathed a collective “fuck it!”

On a deeper, more bizarrely sinister note, what the hell is 6’2” Marlon doing playing a midget? As I understand it, they strapped his no-talent black ass to a chair and just filmed him from the neck up, then CGI-ed it to fit onto a 3-foot body. Does anyone else find this even mildly psychotic? What was wrong with saving a truckload of money and morality and just hiring a midget who, you know, fit the role? You are never going to get me to believe that Marlon Wayans is such a big star that his box office gravity simply would not allow them to hire a little person. In fact, I would wager that for anyone with more than seven functioning brain cells, D-list celebrity Marlon is actually a modest strain of ticket sales poison. This is sort of like, if the role called for an effeminate African-American actor, and instead the studio threw Andy Dick into a dress and painted him in black-face. It just seems strangely offensive, as if there aren’t any midget actors looking for work out there.

Leaving aside the bargain basement sense of humor necessary to enjoy this film, it just reminds me of another type of movie I hate which is offensive in the same calm, sorta stupid way. Namely, films where they either have a white person playing an ethnic role, or some Caucasian dude who assimilates into another culture and mystically becomes a really kick-ass member of the group. I’m thinking Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Last of the Mohicans, etc. I find it hilarious that batshit-crazy Tom Cruise, playing a Civil War vet in Last Samurai is able to pick up the art of wielding a sword so well over the course of a few months that he can fight to a draw a Japanese warrior who has studied this stuff his whole life. Is there anything white people can’t do better than the various mud races?!
Yeah, so, in closing…uhm…don’t go see Little Man. Have a mojito instead.