Shallow Hal Review
by Karina Montgomery (cinerina AT flash DOT net)November 19th, 2001
Shallow Hal
Matinee Price
The Farrelly brothers are famous for a lot of things (franks and beans and a zipper comes to mind) but sweetness and warmth is not one of them. Similarly, Jack Black is not generally hired for being a great guy. And Gwyneth Paltrow is not generally typecast as a morbidly obese wallflower. The Farrelly's are known for going where no filmmaker has gone before, and this film is a very funny and also very anti-superficiality little movie. Black and Jason Alexander have no problem debasing themselves in the name of comedic oblivion and abrasiveness, but Black has to turn it around. Can he do it? Yes he can. I would even venture to say that Shallow Hal is a good date movie: good for screening worthless potential mates.
The concept is clever and given away by the preview, so I don't mind telling you: Hal specifically only goes for the looks and nothing else. Tony Robbins sort of hypnotizes him so he sees people's inner beauty (or ugliness) reflected as their outward appearance. Kudos to the casting people, having to request people based on their looks, or their not-so-good looks. I get the impression that every Farrelly movie (Me Myself & Irene, There's Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber) is a fun set to work on, with a terrific sense of family and relaxed attitudes, and this film is no exception. Making girls look like hags so we, the audience, see them as the hags they are; or, alternately, making actual hags have souls of supermodels, it's delicate balance to walk. They did a great job. Some people undergo no outward change, because they are both nice and beautiful, or vice versa, which is valuable.
Black exhibits great range being utterly, horribly obnoxious, besotted, cool, mean, idiotic, romantic, and bravo to him! Paltrow (literally) glows as the angelic Rosemary, and the dialogue is written just perfectly to maintain the mistaken identity, such as it is. I have to admit I was impressed at all the fantastically gorgeous women they found who were able to act surprised and even pathetically desperately thrilled when they received unusual attention from a man. I went (and recently have re-entered) through good long periods of invisibility in my life, and I recognized the look of the invisible being seen. It's like being showered in gold. I applaud their performances, as well as the "not pretty" girls who were so incredibly confident and even haughty. Marvelous.
It's funny too. It's not just a thinly veiled excuse to make fat jokes (like that one poignant scene in the first Eddie Murphy Nutty Professor), it makes the fat-jokers the villain, and it makes the people who are good, and who recognize goodness, the hero. These days, it is harder and harder to find people who will actually interact with you on a personality level, or maybe it's just since I have been living in Southern California. Either way, it's great message, delivered well, by a cast that looks like it is having a great time.
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These reviews (c) 2001 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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