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As far as I know, Netflix’s slight but undeniably funny “Little Brother” is the first streaming movie in which Michelle Monaghan is caught tonguing John Cena’s butthole on the side of a public road in suburban New Jersey (their characters’ teenage sons happen to drive by at just the wrong time), but at this point I’d probably have to believe you if you told me it wasn’t.
The goofiest, busiest, and most broadly likable of the superstar wrestler-actors, Cena has leveraged the steroidal cartoonishness of his WWE career into a second act as a larger-than-life comedic icon who delights in subverting his size, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes for a laugh — no joke is too dirty (see: “Ricky Stanicky”), no script is too dumb (“Argylle”), and no movie is too bad for him to make better (“Ricky Stanicky” and “Argylle,” but also “Jackpot!,” “Heads of State,” “Freelance,” and a handful of other post-COVID features that likewise don’t exist).
Sometimes, he plays the straight man, and sometimes, he plays the buffoon, but Cena seems happy to slot into any role available in the pursuit of his perfect foil, an ongoing process that has seen him share billing with everyone from Zac Efron and Idris Elba to Jackie Chan and Wile E. Coyote. (His inevitable team-up with Kevin Hart, the final boss of straight-to-streaming action-comedies, is currently in the works at Netflix). If “Little Brother” is the best of Cena’s recent comedies, that’s largely because Eric André is the closest he’s come to finding the right screen partner.
It’s also because director Matt Spicer (“Ingrid Goes West”) has a literate sense of humor, a good eye for visual gags, and a reliable ability to ground the higher-concept elements of Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel’s script in a bedrock of satisfyingly idiotic slapstick. Those talents serve him well over the course of a simple “agent of chaos” comedy — a respectable addition to that classic sub-genre wherein some kind of insane person is foisted upon an uptight professional at a pivotal moment in their career.
In this case, the insane person is Marcus Pinchel (André), who starts the movie by violently escaping from the psychiatric hospital to which he’s voluntarily committed himself. Marcus suffers from a severe but endearing case of Destructive Moron Syndrome (look for it in the DSM-6), which leads him to misread the seriousness of a polite email reply he receives from Rudd Landy (Cena), who mentored him for a few afternoons as part of the Big Brother-Little Brother program some 35 years earlier.
“Hit me up if you’re ever in New York” is usually code for “please forget that you know me,” but Marcus interprets it as “pack up your stuff, drive to the city, and move into my house.” After Marcus gets sideswiped by a truck on the way there (the first of many vehicular gags in a movie that exploits André’s love of car-based shenanigans), Rudd doesn’t have any other choice but to shelter his long-lost “little brother.” Rudd’s open-hearted wife Deirdre (Monaghan), who spends her days hosting fundraisers for disabled wildlife, wouldn’t have it any other way.
The problem is that Rudd already has a brother — an older, biological one who’s been looming over him since they were kids. It’s only gotten harder now that they’re adults, as Rudd is a real estate agent, while Josh (an enjoyably swollen and mad-eyed Christopher Meloni) is the hottest billionaire property owner/DJ in Manhattan. Rudd might be chiseled out of marble and drive the sports car of his dreams, but he still feels small in Josh’s shadow. That’s why he’s so determined to be cast in the new season of Bravo’s “NYC Hustlers,” as there’s nothing like a reality TV show to help redefine your image. If only the show’s producers (Ego Nwodim and Caleb Hearon) weren’t so committed to accurately framing Rudd as the insecure sibling with a very big chip on his very big shoulder.
Absurd as it would be to force “Little Brother” into conversation with “Ingrid Goes West,” Spicer’s enduring fluency with how identity is performed in the internet age — with the give and take of living for the cameras — adds an extra kick to the scenes in which Rudd is trying to cement his place on the show. Scenes like the one on his first day of filming “NYC Hustlers,” where he works to sell himself as a superstar salesman while Marcus accidentally pisses into his own mouth in the background of Rudd’s big shot. “Little Brother” leans on the artifice of reality TV to explore how oppressively Rudd has constructed his own self-image, and, in a way that I hope will prove instructive for Cena going forward, the movie is reliably at its funniest whenever Rudd looks like a buffoon because he’s trying to play the straight man.
Of course, the crux of “Little Brother” is that Rudd is overshadowed on both sides (by real and “found” siblings alike), and so it stands to reason that Cena should be overshadowed by his primary co-star. This isn’t a nuanced character-driven comedy, it’s a Farrelly brothers-adjacent gag-fest in which André is launched down a staircase in a wheelchair, befriends a guy who has sex with his pet rock, and bangs a nurse on the front lawn of Rudd’s house while asking her to call him the Trash Heap from “Fraggle Rock” (that last bit is saved for the blooper reel). Per that inspiration, Spicer’s movie is surprisingly sweet when you expect it to be cruel, and unsurprisingly stupid when you expect it to be sweet. It’s also never more of its time in regards to its cast and setting than it is past its time in regards to its jokes, which isn’t something a 41-year-old critic is in any position to complain about; the romantic subplot that develops between Marcus and Rudd’s assistant (Sherry Cola) hinges on a Hoobastank song that I can only hope Gen Z viewers will be hearing for the first time.
I just wish there was more of it — the sweetness and the stupidity. More of anything, really, as “Little Brother” is plotted to the hilt and edited within an inch of its life in a way that typifies the no-frills efficiency of so many streaming comedies. That Cena and André are so good together is all the more striking in a movie that affords them such infrequent overlap. Given that the conflict between Rudd and Marcus becomes sweaty as hell to begin with (Rudd grows paranoid that Marcus will steal his spotlight), Spicer’s film would have been well-served to paper over it in favor of a few extra gags. Another scene where the “brothers” try to sell a condo, some additional time for Marcus to wear off on Rudd’s warring teenage sons, or whatever else might have been funny to do with this cast; it’s a case where the bloopers feel like proof of a comedy that was cut too short. Imagine that: a movie that left me feeling like I wasn’t getting enough of John Cena on Netflix.
Grade: C+
“Little Brother” will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, June 26.
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