By LINDSI HEBERT, Staff Reporter.
Directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly and released in 2001, “Shallow Hal” (Jack Black) wants a gal. But not just any gal. She has to be young, hot and interested in him. Considering that Hal is a misogynistic moron in khaki pants and bad button up Hawaiian shirts, the last quality is incredibly hard to come by.
To combat this, Hal and his friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) go looking for the hot, drunk girl that will take one of them home for an awkward night of regret and maybe tears. Fortunately for everybody, this doesn’t happen. Now, Hal’s out lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, and he happens to cross paths with the famous TV hypnotist Tony Robbins (Anthony Robbins). Hal tells him about his disappointing dating career, and Tony, seeing the problem with Hal’s far too high standards, hypnotizes him into seeing the inner beauty of women, instead of the outer beauty.
Now, Hal is literally seeing the inner beauty of people. What he sees is what the other people perceive themselves to be, reflected on their personalities. So, instead of seeing an overweight, pimple covered half bald woman he’s going to see a beautiful, confident woman with luscious hair and perfect skin. On the opposite end, if he sees a beautiful woman with perfect makeup who’s a terrible person, he’s going to see some ugly, wrinkled old hag with a lot of makeup on.
This leads him to meet what he perceives as the love of his life, Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow). She’s sporty, fun and does a lot of good work for the community. Things go well between them for a while, until Hal’s hypnotism is broken and he’s seeing Rosemary in the real world. Now Shallow Hal has to deal with his choices and work through peer pressure to be happy in life.I have a very love/hate relationship with Shallow Hal. On one hand, Jack Black has a direct line to my funny bone. Chances are, I will laugh at a movie when he’s on screen. Seeing as how he’s the star here, I laughed a lot during “Shallow Hal.” On the other hand, it is ridiculously corny. What kind of guy is going to base the type of woman he dates by a sentence of advice given to him by his father? Someone who clearly is going to grow up to make poor decisions anyway.
The message, of course, is that true love is supposed to conquer all. Does it conquer all, you ask? I’m not telling. What I will tell you is how Hal’s special new “gift” works is probably the most interesting take on the “inner beauty” thing that I’ve ever seen. I love how it’s hinted that Rosemary is incredibly overweight and not very nice to look at.
Seeing a very thin Gwyneth Paltrow do a cannonball into a pool that causes a very small tsunami is funny to me. Seeing her throw panties at Hal that are large enough to be used as a parachute for a young child is funny to me, because Hal is so wrapped up in his love for Rosemary that he’s just like “okay whatevs” the entire time. It’s cheap humor, used like a kick to the groin would be used, but I still laughed at it.
The whole hypnotized notion that Hal finds himself stuck with isn’t well thought out, as it only seems to work on select people. For example, Hal’s friend Mauricio doesn’t change at all, nor does Rosemary’s father. It’s a selective “gift” and can pull you out of the fun of the movie.
Technically speaking, is “Shallow Hal” the most amazing film ever? No. Romantic comedies rarely are, and this one is nearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Really, this might not be the movie to watch with your date if you’re hoping your night will have a “happy ending.”
On a scale of one to five gummy bears, with five being the highest, “Shallow Hal” gets 2.5 gummy bears.
