Shallow Hal film review

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SHALLOW HAL

Every so often a pioneering film comes along that breaks new ground. Its vision and execution are so original that it defies comparison and labelling. Mostly such films advance the art of filmmaking, but occasionally, as with Shallow Hal, they reverse it. This is quite an achievement by the directing team of the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, whose puerile films had already plummeted Hollywood's low taste levels to new depths with Dumb And Dumber and Kingpin.

It's one thing to make shamelessly stupid movies purely for laughs, the difference with Shallow Hal is that the Farrellys have tried to justify their offensive humour with a trite message. The film is about looking beyond people's appearance and seeing their inner beauty. It's a noble cause, but the problem is that Shallow Hal spends the whole time making crude and facile jokes about people's appearances.

With his father's dying wish that his son not "be satisfied with routine poon tang" and to find himself "a classic beauty with a perfect can and great tattys", the young Hal Larsen (Jack Black) grows up obsessed with the search for a flawless partner. His brazen superficiality has met with little success when he finds himself trapped in a lift with the celebrated self-help guru Tony Robbins (playing himself). When Larsen explains his problem, Robbins puts him under a spell that allows him to only see the real person beneath the surface.

Suddenly Hal finds his fortune changing as the women he talks to, who appear beautiful to him but in actuality are everything but, now respond to his clumsy advances. It's this element that makes the film cross the border from banal to offensive. The idea that fat and ugly people are so grateful for any attention that they would happily latch on to the first person who showed them the slightest attention, even if that came in the form of shallow Hal Larsen, not only undermines the premise of the film but is insulting.

With his new perception Hal soon meets the obese Rosemerry (Gwyneth Paltrow), whom he only sees as svelte, and embarks on the first meaningful relationship of his life. The fact that his friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) and everyone else sees her very differently is more a curiosity than a concern for Hal.