John Cena comedy Little Brother is an Edible Arrangement of low-hanging fruit
Eric André comes to mess up Cena's day in this rote, manic mismatch comedy, in which they don't even play brothers.
Photo: Netflix
John Cena, like fellow erstwhile wrestler Dwayne Johnson, is an actor-as-workaholic. While balancing the enormous demands of a 25-year wrestling career with his ambitious pivot to onscreen performing, he’s clocked in for the Fast & Furious franchise and successfully anchored two seasons of Peacemaker. Readily grasping the fact that audiences enjoy seeing their musclebound screen heroes poke fun at themselves, Cena has leaned into comedy, both in cameos (Sisters, Trainwreck, Barbie) and leading roles (Vacation Friends, Ricky Stanicky). Cena checks a lot of the conventional boxes, in other words, of a 21st-century aspiring movie star. He has built his career thoughtfully, and with purpose—he even learned Mandarin. Unfortunately, there’s a wide-eyed, ineradicably earnest emotionality to his default screen persona, and it’s this misdirected, try-hard performance instinct that helps sink Little Brother, a boisterous yet rote comedy that does itself no favors by treading such familiar narrative ground.
In telling the story of a serious, career-minded man whose orderly life is upended by an eccentric interloper, director Matt Spicer’s Little Brother recalls What About Bob?, though the broadness of its tone leans more in the direction of the seething familial exasperation of Daddy’s Home and its sequel (both of which also feature Cena). Successful real estate agent Rudd Landy (Cena) shares two teenage sons with supportive wife Deirdre (Michelle Monaghan), but is uptight about joining the cast of the hit reality show, NYC Hustlers, that he feels will help take his business to the next level, allowing him to escape the shadow of his hedge fund billionaire brother Josh (Christopher Meloni).
This anxiety is supersized when Marcus Pinchel (Eric André), whom Rudd connected with via a mentorship program while in high school, comes back into his life. Rudd hasn’t seen or thought about Marcus in decades, but owing to the fact that Rudd’s assistant Mia (Sherry Cola) has kept up a lengthy email correspondence in his name, Marcus believes the pair’s bond to be something it is not. When Marcus, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, is heartily embraced by others in Rudd’s life, it threatens Rudd’s sanity.
Spicer touched something real in his parasocial dark comedy Ingrid Goes West, which also centered on a mentally imbalanced person tracking down someone with whom they feel they have a bond. It’s easy to see a thematic link to Little Brother. Unfortunately, Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul’s screenplay feels like a gathered basket consisting of only the lowest-hanging fruit, leaving Spicer grasping for connections that usually aren’t on the page and can’t be conveyed by his star.
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