John Cena Has Entered the Worst Comedy of 2026 Competition

I didn’t think I’d see a worse Netflix film this year than Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy Ladies First, but John Cena and Eric André’s Little Brother is somehow just as bad, if not worse. I read somewhere that Cena said Netflix only agreed to make the movie once he signed on, and honestly, that tracks. Cena is beloved, has a decent enough track record, and brings in a number of different audiences. I seriously doubt that any of them will like Little Brother. That trust goes both ways, mister: You trust us to watch your movies, and we trust you not to make terrible ones.

We’re trying to bring comedies back, bro! Little Brother just set that experiment back another year.

Cena plays Rudd Landy, a real-estate agent set to be featured on a scummy reality series about realtors. Rudd has lived in the shadow of his wealthy big brother, Josh (Christopher Meloni), his entire life, and he hopes the show will finally let him crawl out from under it.

Enter Marcus Pinchel (Eric André), a man with zero filter who resurfaces from Rudd’s past at the most inopportune moment in his career. Marcus was assigned as Rudd’s little brother in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program back when Rudd was in high school and needed something to put on his college application. They only hung out a few times, but Marcus developed a fixation with Rudd, one he thought was being reciprocated because Rudd’s assistant, Mia (Sherry Cola), kept replying to Marcus’s emails as Rudd.

So, here we go: Everyone loves Marcus except for Rudd, who distrusts him because Marcus keeps accidentally sabotaging Rudd’s reality-show dreams by, for instance, trying to pee through a crack in Rudd’s car window but inadvertently pissing all over the car, himself, and into his own mouth. Marcus also gives Rudd’s wife, Deirdre (Michelle Monaghan), sex advice, which leads to Deirdre tossing Rudd’s salad in his car on the side of the road while their kids drive past in a separate vehicle. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. There’s some weird Farrelly Brothers energy in Little Brother; unfortunately, it’s not the Farrelly Brothers of the ’90s, but the Farrelly Brothers of their solo efforts in the 2010s and ’20s.

It’s an atrociously bad film. There’s zero relatable comedy. It’s all zany, try-hard bullsh** that doesn’t work as cringe comedy, as straight comedy, or even as goofball comedy. It just doesn’t work. Ever. For all that’s going on in Little Brother, it’s a surprisingly dull one. It took me three sittings just to get through, because I kept getting so bored that I’d have to take a break. It’s a tedious Elf formula with sex jokes and no @#%QW#ing Christmas spirit or Will Ferrell to save it. It’s just bad. All bad. Every bit of it is bad. Surely there are better scripts lying around somewhere than what were clearly the rejects from the writers of 2008’s Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man. How can Netflix be this hard up for content?

For those keeping track at home, the worst comedy of 2026 nominees, so far, are Balls Up, Ladies First, and now Little Brother. Please stop, streamers.

‘Little Brother’ is currently streaming on Netflix.