Shallow Hal (2001)

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Director: Peter & Bobby Farrelly

Rating: PG-13

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Review Posted: 11.14.01

Spoilers: None

Rating: 2.5/5

By Greg Malmborg. | Read Review #1

Looking past the exterior of a person and concentrating on their inner beauty is a difficult thing to do. Making a movie about the subject is a very difficult thing to do. Making a mainstream comedy, where your trying to make an audience laugh at it and enjoy themselves throughout it, is extremely hard. But the Farrelly brothers new movie, "Shallow Hal," pulls it off and manages to, not only make the audience laugh, but to also move them with a hilarious but sweet-hearted film.

"Shallow Hal" does skate on some very thin ice at times. Trying to get an audience to sympathize completely with an obese person and then turn around and want them to laugh at the person for being obese is a difficult transition. Sometimes it works great in the film and sometimes it doesn’t. Also, the movie seems to be saying that underneath all the fat and ugly in people lies… Gwyneth Paltrow?

As much as these problems arise, a hilarious moment or heartwarming one seems to follow. "Shallow Hal" is much more sentimental than any other Farrelly brothers’ movie. Granted, it is filled with laugh-out-loud moments throughout, but it is really about seeing people for who they really are not what they look like.

"Shallow Hal" is the story of Hal (Jack Black), a bit of a loser, who is consumed by trying to land the hottest of the hottest babes. Ever since his dying father, who was in a drug-addled state, told him that life is all about getting the hottest "poon-tang," Hal has been constantly going out to clubs with his friend, Mauricio (Jason Alexander), trying to score. Both Hal and Mauricio usually fail at this considering they are both short and fat and are trying to score with supermodels.

After getting stuck in an elevator with motivational speaker Tony Robbins, Hal gets hypnotized into only seeing the "inner beauty" in people. Thus, the most ugly and fattest person on Earth can look like, well, Gwyneth Paltrow. Jack is completely unaware of this and begins to date a hugely obese woman named Rosemary, yet sees her as a beautiful woman (Gwyneth Paltrow). This sets up plenty of laughs, especially in Mauricio’s reactions to his friend’s new relationship. Jack falls in love with Rosemary and everything seems to be coming together for him. Eventually, Jack regains his true sight and is faced with some harsh realities.

Other hilarious moments arise from Jack seeing other people for who they really are. Like one woman who works at the children’s hospital with Rosemary, who Jack sees as this hideous looking old woman but is actually a gorgeous young woman. Other heartbreaking moments come up due to this, especially when Jack sees people for real after he's already met them when he could only see the inner beauty. There is one very touching scene at the children’s hospital in the final act.