Last year, at the age of 13, child star Marsai Martin (from the TV show Black-ish) made Hollywood history by becoming the youngest ever executive producer of a studio film – this one. She was inspired by the Tom Hanks classic Big, and had the idea for a new twist on this fantasy comedy, which has been brought to the screen by director and co-writer Tina Gordon.

Martin plays Jordan Sanders, a nerdy high school student in the 90s who is bullied by a mean girl. Cut to the present day, and Jordan has grown up, and toughened up, as a dictatorial tech entrepreneur, played by Regina Hall, bullying her assistant April, played by Issa Rae, who is too scared of the boss to pitch her own ideas for an app. But a weird kid who does magic tricks outside Jordan’s office waves her wand and – oh irony! – Jordan is regressed to when she was little, played once again by Martin, but this time with a rich grownup’s fierce attitude and entitlement. The newly miniaturised Jordan is humiliatingly forced to attend the same high school and to accept April’s quasi-maternal power over her.

Now this could have been an interesting premise, and there is something impressively adult about Martin’s performance (I laughed at the Gary Coleman gag). But the comedy is fundamentally hobbled by the split in narrative focus between Jordan and April. We are never sure who is the heroine here, who has the comedy underdog status, who we are supposed to be rooting for. Is Jordan’s “Little” ordeal important because it teaches her humility? Or because it liberates April and allows her to fulfil her personal potential? But that would make Jordan less sympathetic and less important. Little to laugh at.