While I wish I could say differently, "Shallow Hal" does not represent the best work of either its cast or directors.
"Shallow Hal" is the latest from the Farrelly Brothers, the same pair responsible for the slightly demented "There's Something About Mary" and the equally off-beat "Dumb and Dumber." It stars Jack Black (one-half of Tenacious D and the boisterous music store clerk in "High Fidelity") as Hal and Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosemary, who sports a fat suit or skimpy clothing and sometimes both.
The movie's plot is credible: A traumatic event in his youth leads Hal to evaluate women by their looks only. As a result, he approaches women considerably more attractive than he is and faces many rejections. Self-help guru Tony Robbins (as himself) releaseshis ability to see the inner beauty in women; as a result, every beautiful woman he sees is physically unattractive. That is, all of the traditionally beautiful women are ugly, and the normally unattractive become exceptionally attractive. This is carried to something of an extreme as the beautiful (to Hal) women are improbably lit by warm sunshine and flattering shadows to the point of being comical. Eventually Hal ends up with the excessively large Rosemary, played by the excessively thin Paltrow in a "fat suit." Rosemary happens to be related to someone high in the corporate structure of Hal's place of work. This causes the normal anxiety and workplace-related problems.
While the film's running time is just under two hours, the film feels excruciatingly long. For all its commentary on different perceptions of people, "Shallow Hal" does little to show the viewer the difference between the cosmetic beauty Hal imagines and what everyone else sees. The differences are fairly easy to spot - Hal usually is seeing "inner beauty," but it would have been nice to actually see the difference, given that film is a visual medium. While a theme of this film is to look beyond surfaces, there were ample unused opportunities for special effects wizards to "morph" or otherwise depict the two different perceptions.
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The beautiful women that I saw this film with were incensed at the implied assertion that all attractive women are bad people with ugly souls. It would seem that Hal would meet at least one attractive and kind person during the film's time-span. Alas, there are none - except his neighbor. She is portrayed as attractive both before and after Hal's perception change. Given Hal's interest in her and her latter change of heart (because of Hal's newfound "depth"), one might wonder why the plot resolution doesn't lie in a relationship with his neighbor.
"Shallow Hal" is something of a buddy comedy with Hal's best friend played by Jason Alexander, seemingly reprising his "Seinfeld" role. Unfortunately, after seeing Black win as a sarcastic smart-mouth in "High Fidelity," his performance as a good-natured average guy is somewhat disappointing. This is exacerbated by close-ups that accentuate Black's facial contortions that, while charismatic, are not enough to make the film worthwhile.
"Shallow Hal" lacks the gross-out factor typical of the Farrelly Brothers. While this may be an attempt at restraint and maturity, the absence of sophomoric humor is not filled by anything else. This makes the film seem longer than it really is and longer than it should be. There is, however, the occasional overdone moment of somewhat sickening physical comedy that would have been funny if it didn't seem so out of place in the context of what amounts to a typical romantic comedy.
A fundamental flaw of this film is that its humor comes from slapstick and physical comedy. At the same time, it seems we are supposed to think about whether looks really do matter and how shallowly we are living our lives. One might think this movie has a message beneath all the "comedy." Unfortunately, "Shallow Hal" seems more like revenge on the pretty women that wouldn't date the Farrelly brothers when they weren't famous rather than anything philosophical.
What is good about "Shallow Hal?" Though it doesn't contain anything by Tenacious D, the soundtrack might be worth listening to. But the film itself can be missed.
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