Little Brother does feature a couple of decent jokes. But it’s the type of streaming film that too often underscores its quips, having characters comment on them, and seems largely built around expected moments of slapstick physicality (pratfalls, a deployed fire extinguisher) and shock humor.
If Cena wants to stretch himself and become a more compelling and convincing leading man, he will have to find directors to push him and material that asks, or even demands, he focus on conveying an interior life. Little Brother isn’t that movie. That it doesn’t really aim to be is no great sin. But that it by and large fails even on its own more limited terms makes it disappointing.