Knee High

Little Man

Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans 

Does the Wayans family realize that the concept behind Little Man, their latest collective project, makes it a near-classic comedy? Director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his performing brothers Marlon and Shawn are notorious for childish impudence and sarcasm in such hits as Scary Movie and White Chicks. But in Little Man, dealing with their habitual irrepressible immaturity unleashes something poignant. It makes this silly, lightweight film almost deep. 

Little Man’s plot opposes different styles of manhood: A diminutive ex-con, Calvin Sims (Marlon), challenges a luckless working man, Darryl Edwards (Shawn). Henpecked by his careerist wife, Vanessa (Kerry Washington) and emasculated by his obstreperous live-in father-in-law, Pops (John Witherspoon), Darryl’s life changes when sneak-thief Calvin crosses his path by hiding a stolen diamond in Vanessa’s purse. Trying to retrieve the loot, Calvin poses as an orphaned infant on the Edwards’ doorstep and Darryl, eager to be a father, takes in Baby Calvin. That old lessons-in-cool routine of early hip-hop comedies (Strictly Business, Def by Temptation), gives way to a more interesting partnership. Instead of little Calvin teaching big Darryl how to be gangsta, both men become aware of what their lives have lacked. Darryl enthuses: “I’m gonna show you how great it is to have a dad. You’re gonna show me how great it is to be dad.” 

Darryl’s sincere optimism enhances Little Man’s premise. It zeroes in on our culture’s usual infantilization of the black male, satirizing it as a literal form of bastardization. The soubriquet “little man” was used boastfully in Waist Deep by a thuggish young father’s encouraging machismo in his grade school son. Through such popular premature address, hip-hop culture feeds on the social pathologies affecting family disintegration during the post-Reagan, post-crack era. This arrested development problem gets overlooked because hip-hop culture can capitalize on it, flattering the teen consumer market. The Wayanses’ satirical instincts turn this predicament inside-out. While coddling the youth demographic, Little Man also lampoons it. Tiny Calvin’s towering rage and oversized libido expose the delinquency of thug behavior. And Marlon and Shawn’s rapport provides a familial, affectionate alternative.

For too long the Wayans brand of humor has relied on ghetto rudeness. (The Wayans production company is named The Dozens, based on the black adolescent schoolyard game of personal insult.) In Little Man, the Wayans finally connect their black adolescent abusiveness to its source in several generations’ distorted need for affection—no doubt a legacy of slavery, but certainly an internalized reaction to ongoing social privation.

Calvin has to bond with Darryl in order for this CGI comedy to be something more than gimmicky. (Marlon’s head is digitally matched to the body of a child performer named Linden Porco so that his character’s movements seem as much toddler as imp.) Otherwise, the diamond-chasing antics in which Calvin’s baby steps stumble into criminal hot feet would merely be venal (like the Wayans’ 1992 Mo’ Money). Little Man’s plot, conceived by all three Wayans brothers, follows the same surefire calamitous resolutions as White Chicks and Home Alone. However, emotional advancement comes through Marlon’s uncanny performance, a series of vivid facial expressions, but with a goofy charm that Tony Cox—who notably played a raunchy dwarf in Me, Myself and Irene and Bad Santa—just doesn’t have.

Marlon stylizes primal appetites of hunger, anger, lust. At times, Baby Calvin’s tantrums recall the immortal “Triplets” number from The Band Wagon where Fred Astaire and company, similarly dressed in pinafores and frilly caps, shrunk adult egotism into infantile distemper. Marlon’s horny-baby pantomime is phenomenal. When leering after Vanessa, he recalls Sammy Davis, Jr.’s old-time hepcat, a joke that puts hip-hop era pimpitude in proper cultural context. It is this affection for ethnic pop, plus the Wayans’ inherent brotherly empathy, that gives Little Man its sentimental core. Without it, there’d be no value to satirizing behavior that steadily encourages black men to act like boys. Baby Calvin’s infant id defines the essence of Wayans comedy: it is juvenile, impulsive, needy and vulgar. Stay for the film’s final punchline; a visual gag that salutes the Wayans vulgar life force.