In the long and sordid pantheon of movies that did not need or deserve a sequel, 2019’s “Tall Girl” stands as a shining example. The “film” tells the story of Jodi Kreyman (Ava Michelle), the titular tall girl, and her tragic life as a white, upper middle-class attractive woman with supportive friends and family who also happens to be six feet tall and is thus occasionally mocked for her height (I counted twice in the entire film).
“Tall Girl 2” follows the three months after the ending of the first film after Jodi selflessly hijacks her sister’s graduation prom to deliver an impromptu speech condemning the two people who made fun of her and asserting her confidence in her height, turning her overnight into the most popular girl in school and giving her the confidence to start a relationship with her childhood best friend, Jack Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck). The "plot” of “Tall Girl 2” sees Jodi dealing with her anxiety after she is cast as the school musical’s lead, as well as her relationship struggles with Dunkleman in one of the worst cases of forced conflict that I have ever witnessed in any movie ever.
Although Jodi’s incessant victim complex from the first movie is less apparent in the sequel, she remains as unlikable as before, she is rude to her parents, tries to ditch her boyfriend during a date, dumps him in front of the entire school, kisses another boy the very same day, skips her best friend’s birthday dinner and is continuously rude to her parents who support her unconditionally. The problem here is that Jodi is never punished or deals with the consequences of her actions, and by the end of the movie, she hasn’t learned anything and is essentially in the same position as she was at the beginning. The side characters aren’t much better. Most can be described in one or two sentences and fit perfectly into the tired archetypes of other teen dramas such as the “mean girl” or “theatre kid” and are as one dimensional as you can expect.
With this being yet another original Netflix high school drama, the cliches and tropes present in “Tall Girl 2” are too many to count. The terrible dialogue, the love triangle, the quirky token minority best friend and the musical plot line are just some examples. There’s nothing here that you haven’t seen in shows like “Riverdale” or “Gossip Girl” but at least these had some sort of stake or mystery in them to keep the viewers even slightly intrigued.
Overall, what bothers me the most about “Tall Girl 2” isn’t its predictability or boring plot, but the fact that this movie even exists in the first place. It shows that Netflix remains committed to its policy of producing quantity over quality which is how garbage, such as this movie or “Kissing Booth” gets made in the first place. In the age of digital streaming, film makers face less of a risk as they are still getting subscription money regardless of whether or not the movie is watched by everyone. This is why they don’t feel the need to make even the slightest effort to create interesting projects. I truly cannot recommend this film to anyone except to the most extreme masochists, as “Tall Girl 2” doesn’t even have the decency to be one of those “it’s so bad its good” type of movies. I will be truly shocked if we ever see a “Tall Girl 3.”
Title: Tall Girl 2
Starring: Ava Michelle, Sabrina Carpenter, Griffin Gluck, Anjelika Washington, Luke Eisner
Director(s): Emily Ting
If you like: to suffer, migraines, boredom, wasting your time
‘Tall Girl 2’ took away my ability to feel love or joy
Claire Reid | The Observer
Claire Reid | The Observer
