Little Brother is a 2026 Netflix R-rated buddy comedy directed by Matt Spicer, who previously made the genuinely sharp Ingrid Goes West, written by Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel, and starring John Cena and Eric André. It's an attempt to revive a very particular flavour of crude, gross-out studio comedy, and after sitting through it, I can confidently report the revival is not going well.

The premise is the oldest one in the comedy book. Cena plays Rudd, an uptight, success-obsessed real estate agent on the verge of his big break on a reality show. André plays Marcus, the chaotic "little brother" from Rudd's old mentorship days, who escapes a psychiatric facility and crashes back into his carefully controlled life. Cue the odd-couple chaos, with a late pivot toward something more heartfelt about loneliness and family. You have seen this exact shape many, many times before, usually done better.

Here's my core issue, and it's bigger than this one film. The crude, over-the-top slapstick comedy this movie is trying to be peaked roughly two decades ago, and the genre has barely produced a real hit since. That's not because audiences don't want them, people clearly still have the appetite. It's that, lately, when these films actually get greenlit and made, this is the result. Garbage. There was a moment partway through where I caught my own reflection in my iPad screen and had a small but sincere crisis about what I was doing with my time.

I also have to be honest about the leads, even knowing I'm swimming against the tide here. John Cena and Eric André are both charismatic, naturally watchable performers, and the broad reaction has actually praised their chemistry. For me, though, there was not a single thing either of them did on screen that I found fun. The film leans hard into André's signature chaotic, gross-out stunt comedy, including an already-infamous gag involving Cena, a car, and a sex act, and none of it landed for me. It just sat there, loud and crude, waiting for a laugh that never came.

I genuinely interrogated my own reaction afterward, because I want to be fair. Was it truly that bad? Was there one moment that made me laugh? Is the bar for this kind of comedy now so low that this is what we're scraping off the bottom? My honest answers were yes, no, and yes, which left me feeling a bit like a man trying to justify upsizing his fast food while supposedly on a diet. If you're someone who loved films like Grimsby, there's every chance this hits your exact comedic sweet spot. Take that comparison however you wish.