Tall Girl Review: A Tall Girl Learns to Stand Tall, but the Movie Never Does

Jodi Kreyman is the tallest girl in her high school, and Tall Girl spends almost every minute of its 101 minutes telling you how uncomfortable that makes her feel. The film wants to be a coming-of-age comedy about confidence, but it mostly settles for a series of jokes about height and a romance that never quite lands. It is a Netflix teen movie, and it plays like one: thin, earnest, and oddly specific about the kind of teenage drama it thinks matters.

The setup is simple. Jodi has been tall since she was three years old, and her classmates have spent the intervening decade making jokes about it. Her older sister Harper is short and beautiful, having won multiple beauty pageants. Jack Dunkleman, a lifelong friend, asks her out repeatedly, but she is reluctant because he is much shorter than she is. When Stig Mohlin, a Swedish foreign exchange student, arrives at school, Jodi is immediately interested. So is everyone else in the building. The film’s central question is whether Jodi can stop hiding behind her size and learn to stand tall — literally and figuratively.

Trailer, via Netflix.

The Cast and the Bully Problem

Ava Michelle plays Jodi with a nervous energy that mostly works in the early scenes. She is visibly uncomfortable, which fits the role, but the performance rarely moves beyond that discomfort. Sabrina Carpenter plays Harper as the perfect sister — beautiful, popular, and completely unbothered by the way the world treats her. Steve Zahn plays Richie Kreyman, Jodi’s father, as a well-meaning dad who organizes a tall people club meeting at home without seeming to understand why his daughter might find that upsetting.

Griffin Gluck plays Jack Dunkleman, and his performance is the film’s best trick. He is persistent, sweet, and genuinely fond of Jodi, but the script keeps undercutting him by making him shorter than she is. That is a fine premise for a joke, but it is not a premise for a relationship, and the film never quite figures out what to do with the tension between them once Jodi starts seeing Stig.

The real villain of the piece is Kimmy Sticher, played by Clara Wilsey. She is the school’s resident bully, and she spends most of the film showing Stig around while taunting Jodi from the sidelines. Another bully, Schnipper, played by Rico Paris, rounds out the mean-girl dynamic. Together, they provide the film’s main source of conflict, but their bullying feels less like a threat and more like a series of pranks — prank phone calls, bathroom avoidance, that kind of thing.

The Romance Between Jodi and Stig

Stig Mohlin, played by Luke Eisner, is the object of Jodi’s affection. He is new, he is foreign, and he plays the piano. That last detail is important, because the film’s most successful scene involves Jodi stumbling across Stig playing music and joining him to sing “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” from the musical Guys and Dolls. It is a small moment, but it is the only one in the film that feels both earned and romantic.

The problem is that the film cannot sustain that momentum. As soon as Jodi and Stig start talking, the plot pulls them back toward the bully problem, and the romance becomes a subplot about jealousy and advice rather than a central thread. Jack Dunkleman, played by Griffin Gluck, becomes obsessed with the idea that Stig is taking Jodi away from him. He interrupts their evenings, becomes jealous when Stig escorts Jodi home, and eventually learns that Stig has asked him for advice about Jodi. The advice is terrible — focus on being with Kimmy — and it sends the plot into a tailspin that the film never fully recovers from.

What Works and What Doesn’t

The film’s strengths are its specificity and its sincerity. It knows exactly what it is about — teenage insecurity, the pressure of fitting in, the strange logic of high school relationships — and it does not try to be anything else. That focus is refreshing in a genre where movies often treat teenage problems as a shorthand for universal ones. The film also benefits from a cast that is willing to play the material straight, even when the jokes land flat.

What doesn’t work is the pacing. The film is 101 minutes long, and it feels longer. The middle stretch drags, with too many scenes of Jodi hiding in the bathroom or avoiding Kimmy or waiting for Stig to call. The plot keeps circling back to the same ideas — Jodi’s insecurity, Kimmy’s bullying, Jack’s jealousy — without adding new information or raising the stakes. By the time the film reaches its conclusion, it feels less like a resolution and more like a shrug.

The film’s weakest element is its treatment of its female characters. Jodi is the protagonist, but the film spends more time worrying about how she looks than it does exploring what she wants. Harper is a caricature of beauty and success, defined entirely by her pageant wins and her physical appearance. Kimmy is a bully, but she is also a girl who shows Stig around the school, which the film treats as a plot device rather than a character trait. The film’s women exist to drive the story, not to be fully realized people.

Ranking the Film’s Strengths

1. The sincerity of its intentions — it really does want Jodi to find confidence.
2. The specificity of its setting — a high school where being tall is a constant problem.
3. The chemistry between Jodi and Stig in their best scene.
4. The cast’s willingness to commit to the material.
5. The pacing — the middle stretch drags, and the stakes never rise.

The Verdict on Tall Girl

Tall Girl is not a bad movie. It is a forgettable one. It is the kind of film that will disappear from memory within weeks of watching it, leaving behind only a vague sense of disappointment. The film tries to say something about confidence and self-worth, and it comes close to saying it, but it never quite commits. It is too timid to be funny, too cautious to be romantic, and too shallow to be meaningful.

The film’s tagline — “When you don’t fit in, stand tall” — is sincere. The execution is not. The film’s best scenes are the ones where it stops trying to be clever and just lets the characters breathe. The worst scenes are the ones where it tries to be clever and fails. The difference is stark, and it is the difference between a film that works and one that does not.

The film’s IMDb user rating sits at 4.2 out of 10. That number feels right. It is a middling score, neither a triumph nor a disaster, and it matches the film’s own middling ambitions. The film is competent, pleasant, and occasionally charming, but it is never memorable.

If you are looking for a coming-of-age story about a tall girl learning to stand tall, Tall Girl delivers on the promise of its title. If you are looking for a movie that does more than deliver on its title, you will be disappointed. The film is a fair piece of work, but it is a fair piece of work that never rises above its own fairness.

Final Score

coming-of-age · movie review · Netflix · romance · teen movie