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Newest Reviews: New Movies - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Old Movies - Touki Bouki: The Journey of the Hyena The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Archives - Recap: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012
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Shallow Hal (Peter and Bobby Farrelly) 2001 The Farrelly brothers’ films are notorious for wandering
between good and bad taste, but Shallow
Hal, their latest film, is so generally good-hearted, that you question how
they made something so flat-out offensive as Me, Myself, and Irene at all. Irene
was a one-joke film, and that joke repeatedly rubbed the audience’s face in
the schizophrenia of Jim Carey’s main character. It was a mean, ugly movie and
I was worried that Shallow Hal, with
its skewering of overweight people, would be more of the same. It’s not. Shallow
Hal is a somewhat confused, touchy-feely message movie. Jack Black plays Hal, a guy who goes for women that are way
out of his league, since his father (a priest) told him not to settle for
anything in love but “hot young tail”. The film is pretty sly to make this
proclamation come from a guy who’s doped out on morphine, and that decision
helps the film evade much of the meanness inherent in the film’s unapologetic
stance that (gasp!) ugly people exist. When Hal is stuck in an elevator with
self-help guru Tony Richards, Richards hypnotizes Hal so he can only see people
for their inner beauty (how he can determine the inner beauty of a girl on the
sidewalk while driving down the street is never really discussed). The way that
the film classifies self-help as a form of self-delusion is fairly crafty. After
the hypnosis, Hal predictably meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), a good-hearted
girl that is morbidly obese. Hal becomes infatuated with her based on her looks. The message of the film seems a bit misguided. The
suggestion that all ugly people are inherently beautiful inside seems rather
stupid, as does the one that most good-looking people tend to be miserable cads.
Casting Jack Black as Hal makes sense. He’s hardly a stud, and his
superficiality and dismissal of any woman he deems unfit are more galling as a
result. Still, he’s no great dramatic actor, so his eventual metamorphosis
feels a bit false. Paltrow’s Rosemary is a much fuller character, however.
She’s resigned herself to an unhappy life, and because of her low self-esteem,
she takes offense when Hal tells her she’s beautiful. The film allows her to
be kind, smart, and witty, and that’s something of a rarity for a female
character, especially for one of her girth. Oddly, most of the time Rosemary is
seen as witty, she is seen in her thin, fake version. The fat Rosemary rears her
head when she is sulking or breaking furniture with her ass. For the most part,
the film eschews the comedic set pieces that dominated the other Farrelly
movies, and settles on humor that tends to be more dialogue and character
driven. Sure, some of the gags are sight gags, but they also tend to be less
funny than the contradictions in character that are on display. Despite these
inconsistencies, the film seems well intentioned, and its general sense of
decency carries it a long way. Perhaps, next time, the Farrelly brothers will
consider thinking through their message, though. *** 11-20-01 Jeremy Heilman
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