Warning: Spoilers
As a person who is no taller than five feet, I perhaps cannot empathize with the plight of a girl who is over six feet, but I would say I can relate somewhat to having a height that is out of the norm. Five feet is rather short compared to the average person, at least in America. So when I saw the trailer for the new Netflix film, "Tall Girl", I was intrigued to see what the experienced might be from the other side of the height spectrum.
The movie was essentially about a girl named Jodi (played by Ava Michelle) who struggles to navigate love and relationships as she deals with the bullying and ostracism she receives due to her being taller than most of her peers. By the end of the movie, she realizes that her love interest through the film, handsome foreign exchange student Stig (played by Luke Eisner), isn't all he's cracked up to be. She realizes that she actually loves her friend Jack (played by Griffin Gluck), who had been not-so-subtly pining for her since early childhood.
To start with, I did like that the film addressed how people's heights are treated differently based on their gender. As a short girl, I do know that a guy who is my height might unfortunately deal with more bullying for being short than I do. Likewise, a tall girl doesn't always receive the same treatment as a tall boy. Jodi's character addresses this. When told by Stig (also tall) that it's "great being tall", she retorts that it's great being a tall guy.
Ava Michelle proves to be a great actress in addition to being a wonderful dancer, and does a good job showing that the issue the movie is addressing is not based on height, but on embracing your body as it comes.
Unfortunately, though, there were some times where the movie did miss the mark.
Close to the beginning, there is a joke made by Jack about how Jodi shouldn't get with a tall guy because the subsequent baby might be too big and having a C-section scar would ruin her "beautiful torso".
That joke, to me, was definitely in bad taste, even if it wasn't made as a serious comment.
Aside from that, there is the usual cliché of someone falling in love with their childhood best friend, but the love interest (in this case, Jodi) rejects that person until the very end of the story, when they've had a falling out with their actual love interest. And while I generally don't have an issue with love triangles, I feel like this kind of plot can be problematic.
While Jack is madly in love with Jodi, a girl named Liz (Paris Berelc), is crushing on him and eventually does ask him out on a date. They become a couple for a while until Jack confesses that he's in love with Jodi, and breaks it off. Liz accepts it gracefully but comments that she wonders how long Jack will hold out hope that Jodi will love him back. He says he will do it until he dies, if that's what it takes.
In the end, luckily, it does end up working out for him, but as many people know, movies aren't always a good representation of real life.
In real life, it is generally a better idea to try and date people who actually express romantic interest in you, and do not reject you 1,000 times before they actually say yes, if they ever do. Furthermore, standing up for your friends (like how Jack did for Jodi) is a wonderful thing to do and is indeed what a friend should do for someone they care about, but it does not mean that friend will suddenly become romantically interested in you if they weren't beforehand.
Jack's unrequited love for Jodi was so strong that he never gave a relationship with someone that actually liked him a chance to grow, which isn't really a good thing for him.
Overall, Tall Girl does fall victim to some movie clichés, but has a decent representation of body acceptance and pretty good acting as well. For those who are curious, I'd still recommend checking it out.