I really wanted to like Little Brother. The new Netflix comedy from director Matt Spicer takes John Cena and Eric André, two comedic performers I have appreciated on screen in the past, and unites them via an easy-to-sell premise: A man finds himself forced to reconnect with the “little brother” from his high school volunteer program, who takes their brotherhood very seriously. It’s the kind of simple setup that clears the way for a movie to just be funny. For a while, it is. Despite the film clearly being constructed to take advantage of André’s gonzo antics and Cena’s straight-man timing, most of the wins from its first act come from the script by Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel, which uses movie logic to twist the knife of Cena’s torment in some clever ways. Almost each time a new character dynamic was added to the pile, I laughed at how transparently it made things worse. Once those pieces are all set up, however, Little Brother doesn’t find much worth doing with them. Aside from the raunchy or gross-out set pieces, which are hit-and-miss, the movie rides the same few jokes all the way to their natural conclusions, before then trying to tap into the “heart” at the center of its story and completely throwing off its tone. In the end, I think I spent less time laughing than I did waiting for the film to be over.
Little Brother’s Script Is Both A Strength & A Weakness

Rudd (Cena) is a man chafing under his big brother’s shadow. He’s a successful realtor, happily married to Dierdre (Michelle Monaghan), father to two teenage sons, and is on the verge of leveling up by being cast on a popular New York real estate reality show. But Josh (Christopher Meloni) is a billionaire who big dogs him at every turn. His need to feel as successful and make his brother see him as an equal has started to consume his life, but he’s finally reached a point where that goal feels within reach. Then, Marcus (André) shows up. The two haven’t seen each other since they were kids, when they were briefly paired in a Big Brother-Little Brother volunteer program, but the orphan bouncing through an endless chain of foster homes took the assertion that they were “brothers for life” to heart. As far as he’s concerned, Rudd is the only family he has in the world. And, thanks to a long email correspondence that Rudd most definitely did not write, he believes they’re pretty close. So, when he senses his bro is going through a stressful time, he breaks out of the mental hospital he’s currently in and heads off to support him.

Little Brother is in dire need of escalation, or at least some serious disruption…

Little Brother works best in this early section, largely because the writers have a talent for giving basic character motivation a comedic spin. The series of events that bring these two characters together, and force them to stay together, are just the right balance of absurd and weirdly logical, and the actors are all talented enough to sell them. But aside from Ego Nwodim and Caleb Hearon as the two diabolically ridiculous producers of Rudd’s reality show, who are tasked with getting progressively bigger, no one really gets a chance to make the most of their individual premises. They each play the note they’ve been assigned over and over again.

Eric André nuzzling John Cena as he lifts weights in Little Brother

Rudd is perhaps the most frustrating in this regard. The movie is structured around the idea that he is stuck in an emotional rut, which it treats like an excuse to have Cena repeat the same clenched grievances ad nauseam, as if only Rudd’s wife, and not the audience, will tire of them. Little Brother is in dire need of escalation, or at least some serious disruption that throws the plot off its predictable track. Instead, what is perhaps the film’s greatest flaw also comes down to its screenplay. After initially seeming to embrace the idea that Marcus was in Rudd’s life to ruin it in increasingly spectacular ways, the story attempts to go in a more heartfelt direction, making Marcus more relatable and framing Rudd’s behavior in terms of pain he needs to work through. There are plenty of movies where this works, but as Little Brother proves, the balance is tricky to get right. Miscalibrate, and the cocktail of feelings turns sour.

It is, at first, effective comedy that Marcus’ life has been so tragically bad. A running bit of him having a new, bizarre foster parent for every situation, Slumdog Millionaire-style, is pretty consistently successful. But if played seriously, it is quite sad, and Rudd lashing out at him is simply far less funny. The laughs dry right up. Without those, this movie just doesn’t have enough going for it to keep us engaged. Little Brother is available to stream on Netflix from Friday, June 26.

Release Date

June 26, 2026

Director

Matt Spicer

Writers

Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel

Producers

Ruben Fleischer, David Bernad