Reexamining Shallow Hal

I remember the response to my MySpace review of Shallow Hal made me feel badly for liking it.

Jack Black plays Hal. He’s a fairly successful guy, but his major drawback is that he rates the worth of women solely by their physical appearance. But we like him because he’s not a complete cretin.  He finds himself stuck in the elevator with real life motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, and he tells his life to him. Robbins offers to plant a hypnotic suggestion in Hal’s mind that would cause him to see only the inner beauty of the women he encounters. I couldn’t help but be annoyed when Mr. Robbins put his hand over Hal’s head and roared, “Devils! Come out!’ I note the silliness of actual demons being afraid of Robbins simply because he raised his voice. But I digress. Hal leaves the elevator. He meets and entertains a slew of women while his friend, Mauricio looks on in gaping astonishment. Jason Alexander hilariously plays Mauricio, wearing a Velcro toupee and spouting the best lines in the whole movie. In one scene, Mauricio frantically tracks down Robbins to get him to reverse Hal’s “brainwash”, describing to him the ugly women he’s meeting.

“Who says they’re ugly?” Robbins asks.

“Bausch & Lomb.” Mauricio retorts.

Hal meets Rosemary, a super obese sweetheart played by the beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow (who wore a fat suit for some scenes). Hal can only see the absolute beauty of her soul which is the spitting image of Paltrow. I still love this movie. Because we’ve all been fat and ugly in our lives and we’re all caught up in this maniacal pitch of what is lawfully beautiful. In one scene, a friend of Hal dates a nurse named Tanya who works in the same ward as Rosemary. To everyone else, she appears as this physically gorgeous woman. But in Hal’s sight, her inner self appears as decrepit and repulsive-looking. Nan Martin who played the unattractive Tanya passed away in 2010. I couldn’t help but wonder. How did the producers present this part to her?

“So Ms. Martin, basically the part we’d like for you to play is an extremely ugly version of Tanya…”

Brooke Burns as Katrina (Inner Beauty)

Actress Nan Martin
as Tanya

There’s a cruelty about this, but if the heart motivation was ever right I can recognize the courage in it too. It’s one of the artistic aspects that I admire. All of the pretty actresses had their unattractive counterparts and they probably had to watch each other’s mannerisms. That must’ve been uncomfortable and a potentially great way for them to bond. Brooke Burns is notable for playing pretty Katrina and then putting on a prosthetic nose and teeth for her scenes as unattractive Katrina. 

Brooke Burns as Katrina
wearing prosthetics

But her performance as Katrina overall is consistently delivered with a trembling, insecure laugh and nervous tics. I think she deserved recognition for not playing up Katrina as a joke, but as a sweet, but damaged human being. It’s her portrayal that makes it hard to resist feeling a protective love for the character-- you can’t help but feel a little bad for laughing. Well, I do anyway. It’s that sort of deeply human expression that I recognize in these characters and potentially, I think the actors did too. That’s one reason why Shallow Hal should be acknowledged. Ultimately these characters just want to be loved and they want to have purpose. They've been trained to feel worthless because they laugh a little strangely or gawk embarrassingly. We can laugh with them, but I don’t see them as a mistake. God knew what He was doing. Anything less is cruelty. I had severe cystic acne growing up. While it has cleared up tremendously, as an adult I still have minor breakouts. It’s one of those hard things I have to live with and a thing that some people have a hard time getting past.

"(Save me) from what?!"

"From what? From a pack of stampeding buffalo! That's from what!"

So maybe my friends back in MySpace land didn’t understand how I could rave for this movie. It's likely the Farrelly Brothers did create the human aspect of this movie as a way to make the fat jokes more palatable. Years ago, that genuinely bothered me. I needed to know if they really cared. People are cynical for a reason. If Beyonce never met Jay-Z would she date a lowly average-looking songwriter, even if he was secure and had a heart of gold? I think a lot of men secretly hope so. As for me, I think anything is possible with God when it comes to love. I also think that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. I know there are men who genuinely are attracted to overweight women. But after Hal is brought back to his original state of mind by Mauricio, Hal leaves Rosemary alone in the restaurant and starts to avoid seeing her as she truly looks. Later, Rosemary is seated by the phone in the hospital with her back to us. She hangs up the phone and bows her head to cry after Hal brushes her off again. That’s a real moment. I mean it’s excruciating. Anyone whose ever been dumped or who decided to end a relationship knows it. So Rosemary is not just a “punch line” in the movie, even if the Farrelly Brothers always intended it. The only reason to dismiss this movie is for the disbelief that the Farrelly Brothers are sentimental. Or it’s just easier to be in the nook of our seasoned cynicism.

Even if it doesn’t mean to, does Shallow Hal truly show us that love can transcend physical appearance? I’ll wrap it up this way…

There’s a Vietnam vet named Dave Roever who I heard speak at my former church. He’s a funny, inspirational guy. He went to war because of his conscience, but he intended to come back home in one piece to be a minister. His life changed when he picked up a white phosphorous hand grenade that exploded in his hand, and tore through his face, chest, arms and fingers. He dove into the water to put out the flames that engulfed his body. In the infirmary, he tried to kill himself but it didn’t take. He didn’t think that his beautiful teenage wife would want him. But he recounted to us how his wife came to see him, leaned down and kissed him, saying, “Welcome home, Davey.” They’re still together today. I’m not going to pretend that I would know what to do if my girlfriend or wife was disfigured. But I do believe that love goes beyond a beautiful body and prestige. It’s a very right enablement given by God. 

Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow bump into each other
at an art show a few days ago