Customer Reviews

Shallow Hal Special Edition [VHS]

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(77)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I've perused some of the less favorable reviews of this film and I believe there are some misconceptions about its humor and message. One misconception is that the movie makes fun of fat people. It doesn't. There isn't one scene where we ever find ourselves laughing AT Gwyneth Paltrow. What we laugh at are the reactions of Jack Black to what she does. For example, when she downs the milk shake she shares with Black, it's not the gulping of the shake that makes us laugh but Black's incredulity when he turns around and sees an empty cup. And when we see the two in the canoe, it's not the canoe we chuckle at, but the sight of the befuddled Black paddling air. So the laughs don't come at Paltrow's expense; they come at Black's.

Yes, the movie relies on typical fat-type jokes - ie, overeating and crumpled funiture. But there is a subtle point in these hackneyed images that distinguishes them from your usual fat fare. Paltrow only seems to overeat by the standards society imposes on women. Like Black says, many women when they go out just order "water and a crumppette"; they deny themselves to satisfy society's expectations. But if they were to eat what THEY wanted, how many do you think wouldn't love to order that pizza burger with the fries and milk shake? Or take more than a "little" slice of cake? We all would! That is, we would if we weren't so concerned about what other people would think. Paltrow eats the way she does NOT because she's fat, but because she feels FREE to eat what she wants. Eating less makes no difference so she has no reason not to do what she wants - which is what the rest of us would also do if we were less uptight.

And as for the crumpled chairs and the poor little car's suspension, there's a subtle point here, too. It's not that Paltrow is too heavy; it's that these people are not only ignored in the media but they are also forgotten in the design of the most basic artifacts of everyday life (chairs, cars, etc.). In other words, society treats fat people as if they don't exist. Now, is that a comment on fat people? Or on society? Where's the insult here?

Another common misconception is that by using a model-like beauty like Paltrow in the lead role, the message of the film is still that "fat is ugly, thin is beautiful". I disagree. I can see why this might be the first impression because Paltrow IS used to represent Black's ideal of beauty, indeed, OUR ideal of beauty. But the reason this is done is because the film has to use a common language of beauty to communicate its ideas to the audience. The only common language everyone speaks is the one we see everyday in the media - ie, the thin, waif-like model ideal. So when we see Paltrow, the message ISN'T "thin is beautiful", the message is "thin REPRESENTS beauty". Because that's the only kind of beauty we RECOGNIZE. In other words, thinness is NOT beauty but a signpost pointing to beauty. And the direction the movie points is inwards: true beauty is NOT thinness at all - in fact, it has nothing to do with what a person looks like on the outside - true beauty is what a person is on the inside.

If you still doubt this then just ask yourself this: at the end of the film did you or did you not think the fat Paltrow was beautiful? I did. Not because of the way she looked, fat or thin, but because of who she was.

A good movie. Funny and touching AND it made it's point worth making w/o preaching.

Being that I am a heavyset person myself, I was able to put that fact aside and appreciate this movie for what it really is. Truthfully, I didn't find this movie funny but I did find a strong message. This movie goes to show that size doesn't have anything to do with the person on the inside. Gwyneth Paltrow's character Rosemary goes to show how underneath all that excess flesh that there is still a person. I think "Shallow Hal" is a movie that helps demolish discrimination against heavyset people. This movie didn't only give examples of heavyset people but of people who were skinny and just not physically attractive to that of one's expectations. Hal is a very shallow character and he is an example of all those people who discriminate against heavyset men and women and people who are not attractive. Like Hal in the movie, people can change and widen their horizons for something more beautiful. "Shallow Hal" is less of a comedy and more of a motivational, moving story about life. I think this is a family friendly movie, something that kids would like as long as the situation is explained to them. Let this movie touch you on several different levels and check it out.

Okay, I sheepishly confess that I watched this DVD expecting to see some patented Farrelly brothers humor: crude, insensitive, and in-your-face. WOW, was I surprised.

This movie is definitely humorous (we laughed out loud at times) but when it's over, you come away with a heightened sense of sensitivity for those people society categorizes as "ugly", "fat" or "undesirable." And if you're not careful, you may just approach life a bit differently once you've watched this excellent movie.

Hal (portrayed wonderfully by Jack Black), and his best friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) are a couple of obnoxious, shallow guys who make no apologies for their fixation on dating ONLY young, beautiful women. This is tough for both of them, as neither one is particularly good-looking. But, they drive on doggedly in their pursuit of women who are consistently "out of their league."

Everything changes when Hal is stuck in an elevator with a self-motivational guru, who gives Hal a "gift". In fact, Hal is hypnotized; now, he sees a person's inner beauty, not their outward physical appearance. Unattractive or obese women look like supermodels to Hal; and when he approaches them, genuinely attracted to their true beauty, they respond. After years of being unable to connect with beautiful women, suddenly Hal has an unprecedented run of success...only, the women are really not physically attractive, and this is evident to Mauricio, and everyone else...except Hal. In short order, Hal hooks up with Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is smart, funny, caring, and to Hal, stunningly beautiful. One problem: to the rest of the world, Rosemary is a 350-pound behemoth who breaks restaurant furniture simply by sitting on it.

Rosemary and Hal fall madly in love, and it turns out that Rosemary's father is the CEO of Hal's investment company. Taken by Hal's sincerity, and his insightful ideas for improvements to the firm, Rosemary's father promotes Hal to his right-hand man. Everything is going wonderfully for Hal and Rosemary...that is, until Mauricio decides to "rescue" Hal by breaking the hypnosis. What will happen now that Hal can see the REAL Rosemary?

This is a great movie, and can even be watched and appreciated by preteen children. The sexual situations are mild, and there is little or no foul language or nudity. Gwyneth Paltrow, and especially Jack Black, give excellent acting performances. Make it a point to watch and enjoy this DVD. It just might change your life, and make you wish we could ALL see only the "inner beauty" of others. Our world today is much too preoccupied with physical appearance, and other shallow concepts that don't truly matter in the grand scheme of things.

First published Stanford Daily, Nov 2001.


The Farrelly brothers have done it again. From the makers of such outré comedies as "There's Something About Mary" and "Me, Myself and Irene" comes "Shallow Hal," a comedy with a conscience. Known for movies that feature imperfect men lusting after gorgeous girls with a few laughs thrown in for good measure, the brothers delve a bit deeper this time, seeking to convince us that fat is fun. Jack Black (the crazy music store employee in "High Fidelity") is Hal, a shallow male (if you'll pardon the redundancy) of modest looks, besotted with breasts and waiflike figures. He prefers a girl with just one large breast to one with half a brain. Needless to say, in the true Farrelly tradition, Hal is a loser when it comes to girls.

Hal's messiah is Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who achieves the impossible and makes him see inner beauty. Ergo, Hal moves in a haze, stripping fat women of the excess padding, glossing over manly moustaches etc., to visualize them as the epitome of pulchritude. One such beneficiary of Hal's x-ray vision is Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), who trades her corsets from "Shakespeare in Love" and "Emma" for a fat suit. Despite being well over 300 pounds and gluttonously devouring any source of fat within range, Hal can only see her as the nubile nymphet of his dreams. His consternation at being in a minority of one in his admiration is palpable. Eventually the blinkers fall off, courtesy his shallower pal, the meddling Mauricio (Jason Alexander). The crux of the film lies in how Hal confronts the fat in his femme fatale.

Black's virtuoso performance as Hal makes us squirm. Rosemary, with the fat suit, is ponderously poignant. She shames us with her starkly evident low self-esteem and tame acceptance of stereotypical notions of what passes off as beauty. If only her character had more flesh than fat, the full range of emotions that obese people experience could have been hung out to dry. By resorting to stilted portrayals in black and white of fat people being angelic do-gooders while ugly non-fat people (the ones in this film, barring Jill, can't be called slim), are shallow shysters, the many shades of gray in between are ignored.

Paltrow took a stroll in a New York hotel with the fat suit on, and has been quoted as saying that "...no one was making eye contact with me, or would even look in my direction. No one wanted to connect with me. It was a profound, very sad and startling experience." Some of that sadness is revealed in her portrayal of Rosemary. However, it would however, be a safer bet that UFOs would land at Stanford than to hope that Hollywood would make us laugh and cry in the same movie.

Paltrow looks as radiant as ever. Rather strangely, she reminds one of Phoebe (of "Friends" fame) when she attempts to be goofy. Jack Black has the makings of a star. His Hal is a flawed bungler who is redeemed solely by an inner core of middle-American harmlessness. Rene Kirby as Walt is a casting coup. His joie de vivre is at the heart of the movie's message. Kirby, an ex-IBM employee, was discovered by the Farrellys in a bar in Burlington, as he plodded along on all fours (owing to spina bifida). The character was specifically written for him. Jason Alexander, chubbier than ever, does not disappoint as Mauricio.

The Farrellys have been known for at least one memorable cinematic moment in their movies - most notable of course, Ben Stiller's nuts and bolt coming in the way of his zipper, and Cameron Diaz's organic hair gel in "There's Something About Mary." This one has a twist in the tail. Eminently enjoyable.

This movie has a feel-good message, making it enjoyable enough for three stars. It says that we all deserve to be loved even if we're not physically attractive (in what it considers the "conventional" sense). But will it really change anything of what it deems mere "convention"? Will Gwyneth Paltrow go on being an advocate for the inner beauty of obese people and others "conventionally" unattractive? I kind of think not. Her performance here is significant and may display genuine talent. But most likely her future roles will reflect a sense of glamour in slimness as much as ever, meaning nothing was really changed by the movie. Similarly, will Jack Black, after his similarly impressive performance be any more inclined than before to accept an obese woman as a girlfriend? I similarly doubt that. For all its feel-good message, SHALLOW HAL builds us up for a let-down when we realize its lack of realism. Many of us will go on with our inner beauty as underappreciated as ever because of outer appearances, and will still find hard to swallow that suggestion that prevalent standards of beauty run no deeper than convention.

I have to admit to being less impressed by this movie than many of my fellow reviewers. While I did enjoy certain aspects of the movie in terms of the possible lessons it had to teach, and also enjoyed some of the obvious fat jokes running through the sequences, I also had the distinct impression that the directors were employing this social commentary in an attempt to use it commercially by making it grist for a funny movie. Given the fact that this duo is well known for their infantile and coarse approach, it is hard to believe that their motives were as noble as some of the other reviewers seem to believe. Add onto that fact the unavoidable truth that for people trapped in fat and ugly exteriors, no such movie magic is likely. Their lives are anything but comical.

After all, the fact that the person Shallow Hal keeps seeing in his self-imposed cure of seeing the inner person is Gwyneth Paltrow, an astonishingly beautiful young lady. And all the fat suits in the world cannot suspend our knowledge that underneath her actual appearance lies the irresistibly delicious morsel of human protoplasm. Therefore, pretending that we can suspend our knowledge of what Gwyneth really looks like underneath the fat suit is the key lie undercutting the whole premise of the movie as social commentary, and I for one am not buying into it. This is a slick attempt to cash in on peoples meaner and coarser feelings, and then make those feelings and reactions socially acceptable as long as we get the moral that it is no fun and no fair to have to be fat and ugly even as we are laughing at all the fat jokes that come streaming through.

Having said all that, I must also admit that the storyline is interesting, and the cast is quite credible and convincing, especially Jack Black as the title figure that transforms himself from chronic shallowness to substantial compassion along the way. So, this is at best a mixed bag. As I said earlier, I suspect the directors have deliberately mined a vein of palpable human pain and sorrow in search of a marketable movie product, and am a bit ambivalent about whether all the fat jokes in the movie really are so much in service to the learning of Shallow Hals moral lessons as they are the unfortunate grist for a comical movie that commercially exploits the sadness and pain of overweight people. I rate it three out of five stars for that reason. Enjoy.

First of all, let me state this: I am myself overweight - not obese, but overweight. One of my best friends is morbidly overweight. I found the film, hilarious on several occasions and so did she. I will admit, that she also found it flat for the most part. I won't say it was completely flat, but the film could have been funnier - though when it was funny, I thought I would pass out.

Is it offensive to overweight people? Let's look at this in the light it is presented... Jack Black and Jason Alexander's characters are the narrators (so to speak) of the story. Neither one of these guys is in shape and that is key to the story. They are losers who are both trying to prove to the other that they are studs with the ladies, when in truth neither of them can get a date.

In a casting coup, Tony Robbins, the self help guru, sort of brainwashes Jack into only seeing women for who they are inside instead of on the outside. This is something that we should all do, but very very few of actually do. From there forward, Jack only sees women for the beauty within them. The fact that most of the beautiful women he sees are in fact physically unattractive in one way or another, is a point that is actually rather delicately handled. It is a telling point of the filmmakers that one woman that he sees as an old crone, is in reality a gorgeous woman. So what's the point of this? I think the filmmakers actually wanted to show that just because a person is beautiful on the outside, they can be ugly on the inside. Conversely, an unattractive person on the outside can be equally or moreso unattractive on the inside (this is a point that could have been brought out but was not).

Does the film pander to the idea that fat people are jolly, etc.? Yeah. Does it presume that unattractive people are more beautiful on the inside? Yeah.

Is the film politically correct? Who cares! We have all become so overly sensitive that we're a nation of big cry babies. I hope that I am evolved enough that if I countenance something that I don't like I can ignore it and move on. Who's the fool if I let something get under my skin? It's me. My folks taught me to "consider the source" when I was offended by something or someone.

So, if you think you will be offended by this film - then don't watch it. No one is holding a gun to your head.

But if you do watch it and get offended - then get a thicker skin - I can promise you there are going to be many more offensive things in life than this film. In short - grow up and get over it!

It's a funny film - watch it.

I really don't know how anyone could not love this movie.
Hal, the star of our show, is obsessed with beautiful women.
He puts down those who do not measure up to his high standards, which would be 90% of the world. Through a chance encounter with
a self-help guru, he is given a gift that he would see people
as they truly are, on the inside, their inner beauty.
Meeting a young woman named Rosemary, Hal only sees her as
beautiful while the rest of the world sees her as an obese
woman. Through the movie you are allowed to see people through
Hal's eyes, their inner self and how the rest of the world
sees them, which is never what they truly are.
I thought this movie was great. It's comedy with a good dose
of moral fiber and certainly gives you something to think
about after it has ended. This is one of the best movies I
have seen in a long time. I highly recommend it!

I'm really surprised that so many people missed the point!
First of all, look at the men in this movie that are doing the judging! Not exactly super models themselves, are they? A bit insecure themselves, they have to pick apart every woman that cross their paths.
I thought this was an important movie because of the equally important message. Let's knock it off with the superficial beauty stuff and get to what is really important!
Aside from the message, this was also a funny movie! I realize everyone is different when it comes to laughs. I'd be surprised if you didn't at least smile one time, or feel touched by one scene!
See it with an open mind and leave all your insecurities at the threshold. There's no room for them here!

This film by the Farrelly brothers is one of their better ones. Though they have not shaken off their lowbrow sense of humor, they have managed to better incorporate it into their film, so as not to lose all credibility. As a result, they have put together a pretty decent and unusual romantic comedy.

The plot revolves around our not so good looking leading man, Hal Larson (Jack Black), who, due to a traumatic scene with his dying father when only nine years old, is fixated on dating only women who have super model looks. Pumped up by his equally not so good looking, best friend, Mauricio Wilson (Jason Alexander), Hal is hellbent on dating only good looking women no matter how stupid, mean, or self absorbed they may be. It is no wonder that he has yet to find the woman of his dreams.

A run in with motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, changes Hal's life, when Tony places a subliminal message into Hal's subconscious, causing him to see only the person's inner beauty. When his path crosses that of the morbidly obese, but warm and kindly Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), it is love at first sight for him. He does not see a fat girl but a beautiful and luminous Gwyneth Paltrow.

Hal continues to see only the inner beauty of all those whom he meets, until he is brought back to a jarring reality by his erstwhile best friend. What happens when faced with the reality of having a morbidly obese girlfriend is a trial and tribulation that only Hal can resolve. Will true love win out? Watch the movie and find out.

Gwyneth Paltrow is sensational as Rosemary. Her delivery is affecting, as she comes across as sensitive, sweet, and hesitant, as well as somewhat lacking in confidence. She is absolutely incandescent in the role. She effectively plays the part of Rosemary, as if she were a young woman unused to the attentions of a suitor. She is also quite funny at times, as Hal's comedic foil.

Jason Black, as Hal, is also funny, though somewhat wooden. He is obviously a comedian, rather than an actor. Still, he manages to play his part effectively, overall. Jason Alexander plays his role a bit too over the top, almost manic, and ends up being more obnoxious, rather than funny. In the end, however, when his own personal secret comes out, it really is a hilarious moment in true Farrelly brothers fashion. The rest of the supporting cast is very good and effectively contribute to the comedic efforts of the film.

While this film emphasizes that inner beauty is what is important, it does so, however, while still making fun of fat people at their expense. When Gwyneth Paltrow asks for a slice of cake and proceeds to hack off a third of the cake for herself, the film is continuing to propogate stereotypic notions of fat people. A number of sight gags further serve to underscore this premise. This is, however, a Farrelly brothers comedy, after all, and to be expected.

The DVD has a number of interesting features, including one entitled "Seeing through the Layers", which shows the efforts made to turn Gwyneth into a believably obese woman. The DVD also includes a film commentary by the Farrelly brothers, as well as eleven deleted scenes, in addition to some other features. All in all, this DVD offers excellent picture and sound quality and is value laden.