Shallow Hal movie review & film summary (2001)

At first Rosemary thinks his compliments are ironic insults, and is wounded. Then she realizes he's sincere, and really does think she's beautiful. This has never happened to her before. They begin an enchanted romance, to the consternation of Hal's friends, who can't understand why he's dating this fatso. Of course, if the Tony Robbins hypnosis ever wears off . . .

"Shallow Hal," written with Sean Moynihan, is the new movie by the Farrelly brothers, Bobby and Peter. They specialize in skirmishes on the thin line between comedy and cruelty. "There's Something About Mary" had its paraplegic suitor; "Dumb and Dumber" had the little blind boy; "Me, Myself and Irene" was about a man with a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, and so on. Whether we laugh or are offended depends on whether our lower or higher sensibilities are in command at the time. The Farrellys have a way of tickling the lower regions while sending the higher centers off on errands. Reader, I confess I have laughed.

"Shallow Hal" is often very funny, but it is also surprisingly moving at times. It contains characters to test us, especially Walt (Rene Kirby), who has spina bifida and an essentially immobile lower body. Kirby doesn't use a chair or braces, but lopes around on all fours, and is an expert skier, horseman, bicyclist and acrobat. Because he is clearly handicapped, we think at first his scenes are in "bad taste"--but he doesn't think so; his zest for life allows us to see his inner beauty, and his sense of humor, too, as in a scene where he explains why he's putting on rubber gloves.

There's something about the Farrellys that isn't widely publicized--they're both sincerely involved in work with the mentally retarded. There is a sense that they're not simply laughing at their targets, but sometimes with them, or in sympathy with them. "Shallow Hal" has what look like fat jokes, as when a chair collapses under Rosemary, but the punchline is tilted toward empathy.

Now here's a heartfelt message from Valerie Hawkins of Homewood, Ill., who writes: "Um, what am I missing, regarding 'Shallow Hal?' The trailer prattles on about how Hal now sees only the inner beauty of a woman. No, he doesn't. When he looks at an overweight woman and instead sees her as a thin woman, that's not inner beauty. What he's seeing is a typical tall, thin professional model type--which in some ways is more insulting than if he saw her as she really is and instantly rejected her." This is persuasive. Hal sees Paltrow, who doesn't spend a lot of time wearing the "fat suit" you've read about in the celeb columns. What if she wore the fat suit in every scene, and he thought she was beautiful because of the Robbins training? This would also be funny; we could see her as fat but he couldn't. At the same time, screams of rage would come from the producers, who didn't pay Paltrow untold millions to wear a fat suit.

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