Netflix's new comedy Little Brother puts John Cena and Eric André together on screen, and critics are divided on whether the combination fully works.
The film follows Rudd Landy (Cena), a real estate professional trying to land a reality show deal, whose life is upended when Marcus Pinchel (André) shows up at his door. Marcus starts the movie by escaping from a psychiatric hospital to which he had voluntarily committed himself. He had been exchanging emails with someone he believed to be Rudd, but who was actually Rudd's assistant. Convinced his old mentor is in trouble, Marcus drives to find him and is hit by a truck along the way. Because he lists Rudd as his emergency contact, Rudd and his wife Deirdre (Michelle Monaghan) are called to the hospital. Deirdre insists they take Marcus in while he recovers. Complications follow.
Writing for IndieWire, critic David Ehrlich called it the best of Cena's recent comedies, largely because of André. Ehrlich described the film as a classic agent-of-chaos comedy, one in which "some kind of insane person is foisted upon an uptight professional at a pivotal moment in their career." He credited director Matt Spicer, whose previous film was Ingrid Goes West, with having "a literate sense of humor, a good eye for visual gags, and a reliable ability to ground the higher-concept elements" of the script in slapstick.
The Wrap took a more measured view. Critic Robert Daniels compared the film favorably to older sitcom-style comedies like Houseguest and What About Bob? but argued that Little Brother never fully reconciles its two tones. The film opens with a charmingly strange scene between Marcus and his hospital roommate, who offers Marcus his companion, a rock with googly eyes, saying that "she's a tender lover." But Rudd's storyline stays closer to a conventional sitcom, focused on career anxieties and family dynamics. The Wrap argued that the mix never quite clicks.
Cena has built a second career as a comedic actor after his years in WWE, appearing in a string of broadly comedic films. His upcoming pairing with Kevin Hart, described by IndieWire as the final boss of straight-to-streaming action-comedies, is currently in development at Netflix.
Little Brother was directed by Spicer and written by Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel. The supporting cast includes Michelle Monaghan and Christopher Meloni.
