From the Chicago Tribune
Man, oh man, little laughs here
By Michael Wilmington, Tribune staff reporter
July 14, 2006
In Little Man, the Wayans brothers try to take dumb comedy to new heights, but they wind up shrinking the laughs along with one of their main characters, dwarfish criminal Calvin Sims (Marlon Wayans).
Director and co-writer Keenen Ivory Wayans and his co-writing, co-starring brothers Marlon and Shawn have dreamed up another story in which the premise is utterly ridiculous and the execution worthy of it. Little Man is about 2-foot-6 ex-con Calvin, who commits a robbery in a jewelry store with his nincompoop sidekick Percy (Tracy Morgan) but accidentally drops his prize, the Queen Diamond, into the purse of Chicago suburbanite Vanessa Edwards (Kerry Washington of Ray).
You'd think any self-respecting crook would simply steal the diamond back again, by burglary, armed robbery or whatever. But Calvin is under brain-addling pressure from his hoodlum boss Walken (Chazz Palminteri). The half-pint thief decides instead to retrieve the jewel by disguising himself as a baby and getting dropped in a basket on the doorstep of Vanessa and her hubby, Darryl (Shawn Wayans). (Calvin guesses that the parents won't just cart him off to the police or call a social service agency.)
Despite the skepticism of Vanessa's surly father (John Witherspoon), Calvin discovers he can fool nearly everybody else. (Maybe Vanessa's dad saw the Bugs Bunny Looney Tune about disguised gangster Baby Finster, which partly inspired Little Man.)
I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh at some of this -- though it's not as funny as Laurel and Hardy as toddlers in Brats. But I wanted to slap myself whenever I did.
The Wayans brothers are funny guys. But this is the kind of premise that should have stayed in cartoon-land. The sheer oddness of Little Man suggests that the magic of movies can be misused, the versatility of the Wayans family can be abused and there are limits even to the seemingly boundless capacities of CGI.
The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Co. newspaper.
Copyright © 2008, The Chicago Tribune
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