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‘Tall Girl’ is actually three mediocre teen movies in a worn-out trench coat

by Tanner Kinney Let’s get something straight: high school sucks. If you didn’t think it sucked, you’re probably the reason it sucked for the rest of us. Those formative years of your life where you’re constantly making bad decisions and getting relentlessly dunked on can be a nightmare to look back on for many people. I scraped by thanks to branding myself as “the funny fat guy,” but let me tell you, if I hear one more person make a “fat guy eat Twinkie” joke, I’m going to create a doomsday weapon fueled entirely by preservative-stuffed snack cakes.  So, to me, it’s a complete anomaly why bog-standard teen movies get greenlit so often. Sometimes you have real winners like The Hate U Give, which ascend beyond the cliches and use the toxic atmosphere as a backdrop for intense storytelling. Other times, you have movies like Sierra Burgess is a Loser, which was a Netflix experiment to see how unlikable they could make a protagonist while still getting away with it (spoiler: they didn’t). And now, somewhere in the middle, Tall Girl tries to blend in with the popular crowd despite being a cringey, insufferable, capital-L-loser of a film.

A unique take on high school, just like everyone else

Image from Digital Spy
Tall Girl Tall Girl, Tall Girl

Discomforting relationships for poorly-written characters

Image from Netflix
Tall Girl
Image from Digital Spy

The problem-film without a genuine problem

Image from Digital Spy

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