Maddie Kysilko
“How’s the weather up there?” is a line repeated constantly in the new Netflix Original movie Tall Girl, which has recently taken the internet by storm. The movie’s release on September 13th, as well as its intense marketing campaign on social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, has garnered the movie significant attention, but generally not the positive kind.
Tall Girl tells the story of Jodi, a high school junior who is 6’1”, and her struggles and insecurities surrounding her height and social image. The movie has recently been subjected to intense online ridicule, with many quoting Jodi’s infamous line, “You think you life is hard? I’m a high school junior wearing size 13 Nike’s. Men’s size 13 Nike’s. Beat that.”
Some also criticize how students at Jodi’s school over-exaggerate her height. Junior Lily Grove said, “I didn’t understand why every guy at the school was shorter than the main girl, and… I thought it was odd that the girl was tormented and picked on for her height multiple times during the school day.”
There are many claims online saying that as tall girls, they have never felt like outsiders and haven’t faced the same insecurities that Jodi does in the film. On popular apps, such as TikTok, users create parodies of the “men’s size 13 Nike’s” line by talking about their own struggles or over-exaggerating and crying when they hear it. A comment by TikTok user nqtiie reads, “The movie had so much potential but it was just too pathetic and dramatic.”
Students at T.C. seem to agree with the popular social media sentiment. Grove, who is 5’10”, says she doesn’t face the same type of mocking and taunting as Jodi. She said, “I have never been blatantly made fun of for my height.”
Other T.C. students felt the same way about Tall Girl. “I liked it to a point. I thought it was a cheesy feel-good movie, but it’s not like we discriminate against tall girls,” said junior Clarissa Dallenbach.
Other critiques of the movie are surrounding Jodi’s lack of personality. “Her insecurities really did overlook her personality,” said Dallenbach. “We know that she’s kind because they say it in the movie, but there’s more to your personality than being kind.”
The overall consensus is that Tall Girl seems to be a bust. It received a “rotten” score of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie rating system out of 100%. Grove said, “I think as a whole the movie had good intentions of making tall girls more confident, but the way they produced it and executed it made it lackluster.”
