Calvin Sims is not a baby. He is a man with dwarfism, a convicted jewel thief fresh out of prison, and Little Man spends ninety-eight minutes trying to convince everyone around him otherwise. The premise is simple: Calvin hides a stolen diamond in the purse of a wealthy woman, then dresses up as a baby to get back inside her house. What follows is a movie that treats its own premise as a joke, not a premise, and the results are as hollow as the laughter it expects from you.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Calvin Hides the Diamond
The setup is clever enough on paper. Calvin and his dim-witted partner Percy steal a valuable diamond for a mobster named Mr. Walken. They are chased by the police, and Calvin stashes the stone in the purse of executive Vanessa Edwards. Her husband, Darryl Edwards, wants a baby. Calvin and Percy leave him at their doorstep dressed as a baby, hoping to get inside the house and retrieve the diamond.
It does not work. The plan is a ruse, and the movie knows it. Calvin stays with the couple for the weekend while Child Services is closed. Darryl and Vanessa decide to adopt him, and the film spends the rest of its runtime pretending that this arrangement is funny.
The Baby Routine
Calvin plays the part badly. He is too tall to fit in a crib, too big to be mistaken for an infant, and too self-aware to sell the deception. The movie asks you to laugh at him being found out, at him being caught, at him being obviously a grown man in a onesie. It never asks why a man would pretend to be a baby, or what the diamond means to him. It just wants you to watch him get caught.
The supporting cast does not help. Tracy Morgan plays Percy as a cartoonish sidekick, and John Witherspoon plays Pops, Vanessa’s father, as a comic foil who sees through Calvin from the start. Kerry Washington and Shawn Wayans play Darryl and Vanessa, a couple who decide to adopt Calvin despite his obvious lies. The chemistry between them is flat. The humor between them is worse.
Big things come in small packages.
That is the tagline, and it sums up the whole enterprise. The movie thinks it is saying something about size and value. It is not. It is just a man in a onesie, and the joke is that you can see he is not a baby.
The Diamond and the Party
Walken grows impatient and demands the diamond back. Percy tries to recover Calvin by posing as his father, but is thrown out by Darryl. Walken’s men, Bruno and Rosco, witness the altercation and assume Darryl is Calvin. Darryl and Vanessa decide to adopt Calvin, but when they return from a date having found the diamond in Calvin’s diaper — because Calvin swallowed castor oil to produce explosive diarrhea — they find Pops and Calvin clashing as the former has discovered Calvin’s secret.
The climax is a disaster. The movie has spent an hour building toward a reveal, and the reveal is that Calvin was never a baby. The audience has known this from the start. The party scene, held on Calvin’s actual birthday, is meant to be touching. It is not. It is just a man being thanked for a lie.
A Failed Premise
Little Man is a comedy that fails to be funny, and a crime movie that fails to be tense. The jokes land as groans. The action scenes are dull. The performances are thin. The script is full of holes, and the movie never stops to explain them.
The film was a commercial success when it came out. That is the only saving grace. It made money. It did not win any awards, except for the kind that celebrates failure. It earned three Golden Raspberry Awards, and it is easy to see why.
A Final Verdict
There is nothing here worth remembering. The premise is a gimmick, and the execution is lazy. Calvin is not a baby, and the movie does not know what to do with that fact. It just keeps dressing him up and hoping you will laugh.
Little Man is a waste of ninety-eight minutes. It wastes the talents of its actors, it wastes the goodwill of its audience, and it wastes a premise that could have been interesting. It is not worth your time.
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