20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today
3. Little Man (2006)
Between them, the Wayans family have a horde of accolades, from Damon’s turn in Bamboozled to Marlan’s in Requiem for a Dream. But, no matter what, the boys always seem to be able to scotch all the goodwill audiences have built up for them and reset the dial with one monumentally bad idea.
2006’s idea is called Little Man, and it features Marlon as Calvin “Babyface” Simms, a jewel thief with dwarfism who poses as a large baby in order to retrieve his misplaced diamond and avoid both the authorities and mobster Mr. Walken (Chazz Palminteri). Hilarity ensues…
Except it doesn’t, because Little Man is a melange of everything wrong with the noughties’ comedy scene. There are gross-out gags throughout, including an especially nasty one involving explosive diarrhoea, and that’s before we even get onto the moral standing of the film. Even in 2006, an average-size adult man pretending to be a dwarf was pushing things to the limit, but to then have him act as a baby is a disgusting way to represent and demean that community. No studio would touch this with a barge pole today, and good riddance, because the fewer movies like Little Man out there, the better.
Oh, and to make matters worse, the film was used as evidence of how images can be realistically tampered with by the defence in R. Kelly’s 2008 sexual abuse trial.