Shallow Hal
starring Gwyneth Palrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander, Joe Vitereli and Rene Kirby
written by Sean Moynihan, Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly
directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farelly
This is a story about beauty, what it is, what it means, how it is perceived. There are many pearls of wisdom, idioms and epithets in the world’s cultures about beauty: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; “The brain sees what the heart wants it to feel,” etc.
Tony Robbins, an American “TV image consultant” who appears in this film as himself, says that we have all been brainwashed. Everything we know about beauty if programmed - TV, movies, magazines tell us what is beautiful.
Women can be so cruel. In fact, they usually are.
From a philosophical point of view I liked Shallow Hal. It is a story about Hal, a faceless, unathletic and pudgy everyman who acquires the ability to see the inner beauty (and ugliness) of people - to see them as they really are. So, Hal falls in love with an obese woman - Gwyneth Paltrow - who he literally sees as a slim, beautiful woman - the convention of feminine beauty. Everyone else sees Gwyneth as the obese health hazard that she is and think Hal must be crazy. At first the audience can despise Hal because he is, well, completely shallow. But in the end, after he loses his ability to see his woman friend only as a conventionally beautiful type and sees her instead as the obese person she really is, he still loves her. A fitting conclusion, I think.
To explain Hal’s penchant for shallow cosmetic judgment and discrimination the film opens with a flashback to his childhood. In a hospital Hal’s father, a Christian minister, lies dying of cancer. His last words to his son are: “Hot, young tail’s what it’s all about. ... Hot ... Young ... Tail ... ” An odd message coming from a clergyman. But we can assume that he was not himself in the moments before death, and I guess we are supposed to assume that the shock of his father’s death and dying words impressed the little boy in such a way that he became the shallow adult man we see in the story.
Shallowness goes both ways, though. At the start of the film hal has a girlfriend, Jill. Ill dumps him beduase he is apudgy, unattractive everyman. Hal protests. What will he do? He will be tortured just thinking about her, because they live in the same building. Jill tells him not to think about her.
Hal: How am I not going to think about you?
Jill: I don’t know, Hal. Maybe you should think about moving.
Women can be so cruel. In fact, they usually are.
Jack Black is a fitting actor for Hal. You know Black form other films and would certainly recognize his face. Black himself is not a physically impressive guy - not an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, or a Jackie Chan. Instead, he is a short, pudgy guy who seems to delight in wallowing in and teasing people with physical blandness in real life. He strikes me as a let-it-all-hang-out, no modesty, no shame, in-your-face character. And he enjoys it. Well, good for him.
Reviews that I read in the newspaper were critical of this movie because the film’s makers had Paltrow wear a “fat suit” - a latex rubber and foam costume - to imitate obesity, rather than use a genuinely heavy actress to play that role. If the director and producers were at all concerned with sending a positive message about beauty, cosmetic discrimination in society, etc., to the world then they missed a great chance for obese people’s liberation from stereotyping and civil right by failing to use a heavy actress and instead dressing Paltrow up in a fat suit as an imitation heavy woman. I think it is a valid criticism.