Shallow Hal
 
reviewed by Doug
Schneider The Farrelly brothers have always made movies about misfits. From Dumb
& Dumber to Kingpin to There’s Something About Mary to Me,
Myself & Irene, their main characters have always had to overcome some sort of
physical, mental, or emotional impairment in order to succeed. In Shallow Hal we
have Hal (Jack Black), a slightly plump, average-looking guy. Hal was traumatized as a
child by his dying father’s final words of wisdom that instructed him not to seek out
a good, honest woman, but to only look skin deep and go just for youth and beauty. As a
result, he ends up completely shallow in his pursuit of women. And because of his own
physical deficiencies, he achieves only a moderate degree of success.
This all changes when he gets stuck in an elevator with
self-help guru Tony Robbins. Robbins hypnotizes him in such a way that he no longer sees
the beauty on the outside of a woman. Instead, he sees only her inner beauty. As a result,
he falls in love with kind-hearted Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), a gentle but extremely
overweight woman whom Hal now sees as a slender beauty. Falling in love with Rosemary
makes Hal a better, more considerate man. (Many will point out the contradiction inherent
in this film of showing inner beauty as outer beauty, but Paltrow’s subtle
performance effectively shows the good inherent in Rosemary. So there.)
It’s been said that the Farrellys are cruel in their humor and Shallow Hal will
likely get criticized as a slap in the face to overweight people (in the same way Me,
Myself & Irene was also criticized for making fun of the mentally ill). I think
otherwise. Certainly their movies do poke fun at people, but it’s the way they poke
fun that makes their humor work. When Rosemary crushes an all-steel chair or a solid-wood
restaurant bench, it’s funny because we see the humor in the incident itself. Then,
we see the reactions of all the people around her. The very real reactions of the people
show the true cruelty. It’s the same thing you see on any street corner when people
see a person who is out of the norm -- they pretend they don’t exist. What’s
worse, poking fun at a person and in turn letting them know they’re still part of the
human race or turning a blind eye and wishing they would simply go away? Perhaps if we
confronted things honestly like this film does, we could expand our definition of
what’s normal and more people could feel included.
Despite the fact that the Farrellys use a touching approach to tell the story, Shallow
Hal does fall short of what it could have been. This film doesn’t have the
extreme comedic highs of There’s Something About Mary. There’s nothing
here that will really have you falling out of your seat. At best you’ll be chuckling
along like I did. And in terms of mixing humor, sensitivity, and good storytelling, they
don’t come close to matching probably their best film to date -- Kingpin. That
film managed to create a hero out of one of the most pathetic screen characters of all
time, Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson). The miracle in that film is that although he was a
hero in the end, he was as pathetic as when the film started! Hal learns to be a better
person here, but it isn’t nearly as memorable. In the end, Shallow Hal is a
fun ride, but it doesn’t achieve what the Farrellys are capable of. It’s a
little empty on its own inside and gets a *** rating. |
