Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall) owns a marketing company with a dozen employees who find her a little too much to handle. Part Devil Wears Prada and part demon, Jordan demands that her daily routine include everything from a fully stocked designer closet to her morning fuzzy slippers being left exactly a few centimeters from her bed frame. And don’t you dare place her coffee on her desk without measuring exactly 12 inches from the edge. Say what?! Jordan’s assistant, April (Issa Rae) is a bit more Zen, but she can’t seem to please her overbearing Lady Boss despite being a loyal employee for a few years.
Jordan is carb-free, personality-free and hands-off. She’s beyond bitchiness. She’s just plain cruel. This might explain why the film’s opening feels forced, fake and cliché from a world that no longer exists, or certainly one that wouldn’t allow for sexual harassment or bullying behavior at today’s workplace. Nevertheless, the only one who can please Jordan Sanders isn’t her boy-toy Trevor (Luke James) but instead her Suri-esque machine named ‘HomeGirl.’
Jordan’s biggest client wants a fresh voice to bring in tech gear and game aps. She’s got forty-eight hours to please him. She’s got ‘one shot’ like Eminem. At this point, we hope she blows it and her company folds. Why do we care bout this woman exactly?
Maybe because we aren’t supposed to. Maybe because we’re supposed to care more about the Mini-Me Jordan who’s about to steal the movie when the local vendor’s daughter “Fire Hazard” puts a spell on Jordan who suddenly finds herself waking up one morning as her thirteen-year-old self. Literally.
Little Joran Sanders (Marsai Martin) is all that and then some. Her performance steals the show, but she also steals our hearts as she comes to realize she’s going to have to accept this Middle-School-get-me-outta-here-body equipped with an environment and mind-set of bullies, geeks and cheerleaders. Going back to school even decades later is not much different than from when she attended middle school back in the day. The only difference, she arrives toting the carmel-colored Birkin bag owned by her older self.
A welcome addition to her old school is her new young, hot teacher, Mr. Marshall (This Is Us TV heartthrob Justin Hartley.)
With Jordan’s big hair and ever bigger attitude, and now the added confidence from being an adult (on the inside), the film gives us hope that there’s a massive learning curve ahead on bully behavior and how to curb it. There’s even a collection of adorable side-kick geeks who young Jordan wants to escort to coolness.
We have hopes that the film will turn into the classic Big, but Big had a soul and a lot of endearment. This story is empty. Jordan explains that as a kid she was beaten down so that when she grew up, she adjusted her attitude to toughness before others attacked. Huh? In the end, what we sign up for is learning that material still matters, and being ‘Little’ isn’t as bad as being ‘small’ which she somehow remains, even when transformed back to her bigness. When Jordan wakes up back to big (spoiler alert) she’s still dashing to her closet to grasp and smell all of her Louis Vuitton and Louboutin with glee. Just what we hope for all our daughters. Not! 2 tiaras