November 9, 2001 | I never expected to be using the words “sweet” and “sensitive” in a review of a movie co-directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the cheery vulgarians responsible for Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. But, then again, I never expected the Farrellys to give us something as…. well, as sweet and sensitive as Shallow Hal. Indeed, this may be the sweetest and most sensitive movie ever made about a selfish lout whose best friend brags about the size of his bowel movements.
Hey, I did say this was a movie by the Farrelly brothers, didn’t I? You can’t expect a leopard to change its spots, or gross-out funny guys to completely avoid naughty-boy jokes about effluvia.
The selfish lout – who, of course, sees the error of his ways – is named Hal, and he’s played by Jack Black, the robust motor-mouth who made his movie breakthrough last year as an attention-grabbing supporting player in High Fidelity. (More recently, he appeared in Saving Silverman, but I’m sure he would prefer us to forgive and forget that misadventure.) In Shallow Hal, he tackles his first leading role, and there are times in the movie when he deserves to be penalized for unnecessary roughness. He tries too hard, too obviously, in too many scenes. And he seems to encourage a similar excessiveness in co-star Jason Alexander, who overplays Mauricio, the fellow with misplaced pride in his bodily functions.
At his sporadic best, however, Black evidences a swaggering-kamikaze comic flair that suggests a more domesticated (and, yes, much sweeter) version of John Belushi’s classic Animal House turn as Bluto Blutarsky.
After an oddly unfunny prologue that posits childhood trauma as the “explanation” for Hal’s loutishness, we’re introduced to the grown-up guy in his natural habitat – i.e., a dance club filled with tantalizing hotties. Unfortunately, Hal – much like Mauricio – can’t get any drop-dead gorgeous woman to give him the time of day, much less her name and phone number. Even more unfortunately, Hal – again, like Maurico – has set such impossibly high standards for himself that he will settle for nothing less than drop-dead gorgeousness while on the prowl for a significant other.
Hal isn’t able to broaden his horizons until he’s stuck in a stalled elevator with self-help motivator Tony Robbins (played, in a bold stroke of casting, by self-help motivator Tony Robbins). Using hypnotic suggestion, Robbins programs Hal to ignore outward appearances and see only “inner beauty.” After that, it doesn’t take long before Hal is dancing the night away with fetching babes at his favorite club. At least, he thinks they are fetching. Mauricio, who doesn’t know or care about inner beauty, sees the women as they really are. So do we. Trust me, they’re not centerfolds.
So far, so-so. Shallow Hal takes a while to get into its groove, and the flatness of the early scenes primes you to expect a full-blown misfire. But the movie springs to life when Hal wanders into a department store and sees Rosemary, an immense young woman who could pass for a sumo wrestler. Except that he doesn’t see her as immense. In his eyes, she is svelte and sexy. In fact, she looks just like Gwyneth Paltrow – who just happens to be the actress cast as Rosemary.
Throughout most of Shallow Hal, we see Rosemary as Hal does, and that means Paltrow gets to look more or less like herself. The beauty part is, Paltrow manages to convey the wary shyness and ponderous body language of her character even while she’s the idealized object of Hal’s affection. There’s no other way to put it: Paltrow “acts” fat, and is remarkably persuasive. She neatly balances raw vulnerability with a profound skepticism – you can almost hear her thinking, “Who is this guy? What is he after? Why is he saying such terribly nice things about me?” And you can share her desperate hope that, maybe this time, maybe for the first time, she has found someone who could love her.
Periodically – mostly in scenes involving sight gags that have already been overexposed in TV spots and coming-attractions trailers – we get brief glimpses of the “real” Rosemary (played, apparently, by a body double). And for much of the movie’s final half-hour, Paltrow relies on heavy make-up to credibly render a mountainously overweight woman. But her performance works best – and is most affecting – when she plays by heart, without resorting to latex supplements or digital trickery.
The Farrellys, working from a script they co-wrote with Sean Moynihan, treat Rosemary with an unusual (for them) generosity of spirit. They’re also surprisingly respectful, though broadly playful, in their showcasing of Rene Kirby, a man handicapped but certainly not immobilized by spinal bifida. Rene plays Walt, a good friend of Hal and Mauricio, as a fun-loving, wisecracking party animal who makes all the right moves, even though he walks on all fours.
Shallow Hal is good enough to make you wish it were a lot better. The Farrellys are unconscionably sloppy about defining the “spell” placed on Hal – sometimes he sees women as they really are, sometimes he doesn’t, and sometimes he sees “inner beauty” in men as well. (I don’t have to tell you that the “spell” eventually is broken, do I?) And the movie overall has the slapdash look and sound of something made by happy-go-lucky amateurs with little regard for such niceties as lively pacing, unobtrusive looping – some obviously post-synchronized dialogue is laughable for all the wrong reasons – and attractive lighting.
On the other hand, Paltrow is pretty gosh-darn terrific, Black is never less than adequate, and the movie is undeniably – yes, you guessed it! – sweet and sensitive. Besides, you can’t be too hard on a comedy that casts Joe Viterelli, a bulbous-nosed character actor usually typecast as a Mafioso (The Firm, Analyze This), in the role of Rosemary’s father, a courtly business tycoon with a thick Irish brogue. Maybe the Farrellys were able to see his inner Hibernian.
