Little Brother (Netflix): Movie Review

While Little Brother is certainly light and enjoyable, it also treads on narrative beats we’ve seen many times before in better – and funnier – comedies.

Less formally and thematically audacious than Ingrid Goes West, Little Brother takes the easygoing studio-production route by introducing us to John Cena as real estate mogul Rudd, who has built a pretty successful career and is on the brink of starring in a highly popular reality show. However, this promising future is upended when he receives an unexpected visit from his Little Brother, Marcus Pinchel (Eric André), an escaped mental patient who longs to reconnect with Rudd.

The thing is, Marcus is not Rudd’s brother. He already has a fairly complicated relationship with his real brother, Josh (Christopher Meloni). Marcus was a foster child who was part of a charity program named “Little Brother, Big Brother,” where a younger person would be paired with an older individual to spend time with. Rudd was the older person who occasionally played basketball with him a few times, so it would look good on a college application. He never had an actual relationship with him. However, since his wife Deirdre (Michelle Monaghan) takes sympathy for Marcus, he begins to invade all aspects of Rudd’s everyday life and turn it into a living hell, while everyone around the protagonist adores having Marcus around.

If you read this plot summary and thought of Frank Oz’s severely underappreciated What About Bob?, you’d be correct. If Cena had played a psychologist on vacation instead of a real estate agent, one could have made the argument that Little Brother is a loose remake of Oz’s notoriously difficult-to-make comedy. All of the narrative beats are present: Rudd shows resentment to a person in need of help, while Marcus’ benevolent intentions turn out disastrous for Rudd, but not for everyone else. His wife shows fond appreciation for Marcus, while Rudd immediately wants to get rid of him. It’s an age-old plot structure that has been done far too many times for Little Brother to feel original, but Spicer and his writers Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel don’t punish the protagonist as much as Richard Dreyfuss’ Dr. Leo Marvin’s tragicomic fate.

The conclusion is far more emotive than it has any right to be, but that’s in part due to Cena’s excellent acting skills as a comedic and dramatic powerhouse. If his career-best performance in James Gunn’s Peacemaker didn’t convince you of his future on the screen, maybe a breezy comedy like Little Brother might, because his portrayal of Rudd hits all of the required emotional notes for the character’s evolution to feel convincing. We end up expressing sympathy for him, even if he makes it very difficult for us to relate to him for the bulk of the movie, because there’s a reason behind Marcus’ increasingly obsessive (and occasionally bizarre) behavior that stems from a place of loneliness that has never truly been addressed.

This theme is, by far, the most interesting aspect of Little Brother. Spicer takes thoughtful time to examine Marcus’ past, in contrast to how Rudd perceived his “Little Brother.” There’s a specific image in a flashback, brilliantly composed by cinematographer Brandon Trost, where Marcus longs for a connection with someone, anyone, but Rudd won’t give him that satisfaction. Placing him in the middle of a desolate basketball court, as the camera pulls away from him, makes the audience understand where his loneliness comes from and why his desperate acts are more of a cry for help than behavior that would drive someone else crazy.

In that regard, André’s performance works best when he’s more vulnerable than purely comedic. His specific style of intense, in-your-face comedy works well in films like Bad Trip and Jackass Forever, but not so much in a movie that attempts to imbue a character like Marcus with texture, away from scenes where he pees inside a luxurious vehicle and destroys it. Some of the humor also feels dated, especially when Spicer attempts to stage a romantic moment with Hoobastank’s “The Reason.” That needle drop worked perfectly on Netflix’s Beef, and Spicer is certainly a fan of specific pop songs with tangible comedic weight (see the use of K-Ci and JoJo’s “All My Life” in Ingrid Goes West), but the use of the song doesn’t work here.

Many sequences are also reliant on misunderstandings, which are fine for a couple of scenes, but not for the entire movie’s comedic structure. Still, Cena and André know how to be effective in slapstick, and there are certainly a few bits that got a massive laugh out of me. However, compared to Spicer’s previous directorial effort, one of the funniest comedies of the last decade, the laughs don’t come as frequently as they should.

There are far worse streaming movies than Little Brother, but it should’ve been so much better than what we ultimately had on screen, especially with a filmmaker like Matt Spicer at the helm of the project. Cena and André are highly entertaining together, sure, and the supporting cast also has fun, but the entire project feels mostly unremarkable. When it begins to explore Marcus’ vulnerabilities and his relationship with Rudd, the movie shines. When it bathes in excessively crude and downright mean-spirited humor, your mileage may vary. I certainly enjoy it when it’s funny. More often than not, this film isn’t. But it’s also not terrible. All I can say is it could’ve been worse. If that’s the endorsement you want, by all means, go on Netflix and check it out. If you want a comedy with similar themes and substance, watch What About Bob? You won’t regret it.

Little Brother will be available to stream on Netflix from June 26, 2026.