Little stars Regina Hall and Black-ish’s Marsai Martin, who also conceived the plot and is an executive producer. They play Jordan, a tech mogul who suddenly finds herself in her middle school body and must change her abusive ways to enlist the help of her assistant, April, so she doesn’t lose her company or get removed from her home and end up in foster care. Issa Rae plays April. Rae is famous from being the star of HBO’s Insecure fame, but I will always love and remember her from The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

I’m not into Hollywood comedies. There is nothing worse than not laughing out loud during the entire length of a comedy so I usually save them for home viewing. At least I can save money and the effort of getting to the theater even if I’ll forever lose my time, but I love Martin and Rae. When I found out there were black women behind the camera too as writer and director, the scales tipped to see it in the theaters. When I saw Martin promoting the movie on The Daily Show, I realized that it was a big step for the future of her career, and I want her to have the option of being a force behind and in front of the camera. Regina Hall closed the deal. She isn’t featured prominently in the previews, but she is in it. I don’t recall seeing her in a movie that wasn’t good. She is criminally underrated as an actor so if she was willing to put her name on this movie, I could take a chance and step out of my comfort zone.

I’m so glad that I did. Little is far from a perfect movie, but I saw it with a perfect audience that genuinely loved the movie. There were a handful of scenes that I know that I would not have liked if I saw it at home alone because it didn’t quite make sense in terms of the overall narrative or even the dictates of what had transpired earlier in that scene and felt awkwardly jammed in for laughs, but it ended up getting the loudest claps and appreciation. It helped me see that sometimes the best part of a comedy is being able to see something through other people’s eyes and just going with it to appreciate that scene in isolation, which the audience did. It unfolds in a nice restaurant filled with stuffy types. It is funny as a non sequitur, a forbidden activity that as an adult you would never do, but as a kid, you may. Jordan’s behavior sparks a chain reaction of puncturing others’ adult together personas and reveals their true selves and emotions.  I would have never understood that moment without the packed Boston audience helping me to do the same.

A lot of people stop and think it is sufficient to describe Little as reverse Big meets The Devil Wears Prada, but there are two protagonists at different stages in their life who also need to appreciate the other and grow from that other person’s best or worst qualities. I loved how the movie, which is wholly unrealistic (smart does not automatically result in being the boss or rich, and even in this movie, the boss gets bullied) brought fantasy concepts to a realistic and relatable framework. Jordan’s behavior is inexcusable and horrendous, but the movie also correctly reflects that she can be checked and is always a client away from failure in a way that others are not, which seemed to include a veiled swipe at Presidon’t. The specter of legal consequences, which is usually missing in these body transformation movies, is always a silent threat hovering over these privileged characters. Even though people hate Jordan’s behavior, when offered a kinder and gentler style of women in leadership, they run rough shod over her except when she briefly responds sternly. On some level, do people want bad bosses by positively reinforcing and accepting that behavior? I’m not thrilled that a lot of movies’ premises rest on knocking a woman boss down a peg, but I’ll hesitantly sign a waiver since she still retained her power.

A lot of Little’s humor is predicated on the black experience, particularly the acceptability of spanking. Those jokes never got old for me. Jokes about spanking will never not be funny. There are a lot of body objectification of men jokes that end up working because the men are hot and humanized as more than their body. My audience went nuts when Justin Hartley from This Is Us and Smallville appeared, but there were plenty of other hunky (black) men. I could be overthinking, but black girls are often oversexualized and victimized then denigrated as fast. In this case, a grown woman actually is behaving normally, but in a little girl’s body. The jokes are funny because the men swiftly shut her down and are appalled. Even a reasonably fast little girl is not an excuse for men to encourage that behavior. The movie makes these jokes work because it models what a safe world should look like for a little girl among grown men and shows grown men acting appropriately as nurturers.

Intellectually I know that Little emotionally manipulated me with the lessons that Jordan learned, but they were good lessons. “When we’re kids, we know who we are, but the world beats it out of us.” Here is another cheesy, but true aphorism: hurt people hurt people. The emotional core of the movie is solid though I never could completely cosign the idea, even at the end of the movie, that Jordan and April were friends. The power dynamics will always be unequal, and it just isn’t Jordan’s personality. They are more like mentor and mentee, but also there is an unspoken bond because they are black women. I was also happy that the focus on the movie was on their career, and while their romantic relationships were important, it was never centralized.

While I enjoyed the consumerism in Little, I was also a little disturbed by it. The one value that is never examined is people’s worth defined by their possessions and appearance. It is part of natural human behavior to respond positively when someone looks nice, but unquestioningly accepting it as valid criteria for acceptance and success instead of also a crucial contributing factor in Jordan’s abusive personality seems like a missed opportunity. The movie stops at makeovers are fun. [April did look like Cookie from Empire.] Side note: loved adult Jordan’s hair color, and Rae is so radiant. Between Rae’s smile and her skin, how is she not making more lists as one of the most gorgeous actors working today?!?

I laughed throughout Little and found it completely entertaining. There are sexual situations so while I think that the whole family would enjoy it, maybe don’t bring the kids if they’re too little. I also think that it is a benign date night movie. There were plenty of guys in my audience so it could work as a girl or a guy night out movie. Opening weekend box office figures are crucial for Hollywood to fund black women led movies in the future so see it in the theaters.