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Shallow Hal

Shallow Hal (2001)

November. 01,2001
|
6
|
PG-13
| Comedy Romance

After taking his dying father's advice, Hal dates only the embodiments of female physical perfection. But that all changes after Hal has an unexpected run-in with self-help guru Tony Robbins. Intrigued by Hal's shallowness, Robbins hypnotizes him into seeing the beauty that exists even in the least physically appealing women. Hal soon falls for Rosemary, but he doesn't realize that his gorgeous girlfriend is actually a 300-pound-not-so-hottie.

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framptonhollis
2001/11/01

I'm surprised that this movie has such a low rating, since I did find it to be genuinely charming and funny, much better an most modern romantic comedies. As a matter of fact, this movie was almost great, and it could have reached that level if only a few little tweaks and changes were made. Personally, I thought that the ending was an absolute bummer. It was overly sweet when it could have ended on a slightly darker note, which was the path that I felt the film was taking. Now I am not saying that this movies ending could not have been sweet, but it was so sickeningly cliché and obnoxiously over the top unrealistically happy that it disappointed me. A good example of a film ending that is both sweet and slightly tragic would be the ending of "Chasing Amy", another romantic comedy drama.Other flaws have to do with various jokes not really working and the plot of the movie being restated over and over again by characters to an annoying degree.However, the overall movie is surprisingly good and somewhat underrated. It is very funny, and juggles mocking and feeling sympathy for its characters really, really well. And I enjoyed the fact that the humor was not afraid to get super dark at times. The entire opening sequence is classic dark comedy!There is also quite a bit of heart and soul to this movie. Believe it or not, it actually,are me tear up a little at one point, very unexpected for this type of movie! I was impressed with the emotional conflicts and they had me really engaged and moved, but then all of that was screwed up by the ending!This is a movie that I would recommend, but with mild caution since the ending does largely ruin the experience, at least it did for me, anyway.

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Adam Foidart
2001/11/02

"Shallow Hal" is a mix of a very sweet and earnest love story with a comedy that often doesn't really work. I was won over by the fantasy love element and I do think it has more appeal than it doesn't. The idea that the titular character Hal (Jack Black) is a shallow guy who gets hypnotized into seeing women as they are inside instead of what they look like on the outside. He begins falling in love with Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fat woman that has a big heart.Alright, that premise doesn't really make any sense because how could Hal know what people are like on the inside unless he knew them intimately, and unless the hypnosis also messed around with his sense of touch and his strength, there's no way he wouldn't realize that his vision is all kinds of screwed up, but let's just get past that. I feel like there's some good potential for humor with this premise, like if say a hot shot celebrity had an "ugly" sister and Hal confused one for the other, or he was a makeup artist (or even funnier, a plastic surgeon) and he started going crazy with people's faces even though they didn't need it. I'm sure you can come up with some good ideas too. Not a lot of the potential is used here. What we do get plenty of is exactly what you would expect from the premise. Hit or miss jokes about Hal thinking that some ladies are hot while everyone around him stands dumbfounded, fat jokes, and visual gags of seeing beautiful women looking at big clothes or plates full of food and they don't even have the courtesy of coming in quickly enough to build off of each other and make you laugh.What saves the movie, and I would say actually makes it legitimately good is the love plot. As a fine male specimen with impeccable features that regularly has to fight the ladies off with a stick, you might not think that a story about an insecure lady who has been ignore her whole life one day discovering a man that falls head over heels for her would necessarily phase me, but it really did. If you've ever felt like you were judged because of what you looked like on the outside, that part of the movie will really drive home and it will make you smile. This comedy could have dropped the ball badly by handling the hypnotism thing the wrong way, making it feel like Hal is simply tricked into loving her, but without giving away what exactly happens during the conclusion, I felt like it handled that potential problem very well. This could have easily become a tasteless, mean-spirited mess, one that gets its laughs at the expense of "unattractive people" and I'm glad to say that it doesn't. The conclusion really pulls it all together and makes the shaky premise work. Overall "Shallow Hal" isn't of the Farrelly Brothers' funniest film but it probably is their most heartwarming. (On DVD, November 12, 2012)

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Cool Great Dane
2001/11/03

Good science-fiction film.The movie goes about fat people and how they can't get dates because they are fat and they annoy the hell out of beautiful slim people while dancing in dance floors. A really self-confident man (Anthony Robbins) changes the life of Hal (Jack Black) by jolting his nervous system. After this nervous system jolting Hal is able to comprehend that beautiful thin people were living inside the fat ugly people all along, so basically he got some fat-reducing glasses. Hal becomes unfattified.Hal goes on to dance with tons of pretty thin women trapped inside ugly, bad-haired, wart-friendly, elongated-nosed, fat humans. He then meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) who, being the sexiest inner woman Hal has encountered, is also the fattest. At various points in the film we can see her "true" form on the reflections of some surfaces and when seeing her through the eyes of humans other than Hal. She's fat, like extremely fat on the outside and at one point you can actually see her cellulite, yuk! So they fall in love and have some fat sex all the while Hal is thinking he's having some super model sex.Hal's friend Mauricio (Jason Greenspan a.k.a. Jason Alexander) is a mutant and unable to score with any senorita, so he decides to ask the really self-confident man to un-unfattify Hal.When Hal becomes un-unfattified he can't understand why there is a robust woman eating his dinner at the restaurant.Mutant friend explains to an un-unfattified Hal why he's now seeing fat monstrous people instead of adorable exquisite humans. He then has a choice to make - either forget about fat Rosemary or accept her with all her chubbiness and have some lard-filled sex with her.At the end they get back together and do as fat people does: they go to hide somewhere in Africa hoping they can mix in with the indigenous bony starving population.All in all. A good film to watch on a gym day.

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slightlymad22
2001/11/04

Don't be confused by the subject matter of this comedy, this is a very touching movie.A Shallow man (Jack Black) is obsessed with only dating beautiful women, until he is hypnotised in to only seeing the inner beauty of people he meets. He then meets Rosemarie (Gwyneth Paltrow) and falls in love This was Jack Blacks first lead role. After roles in 'Cable Guy' and 'Enemy Of The State' and a very good supporting role in 'High Fidelity and he is perfectly cast as the title character. Until 'School Of Rock' two years later, this was his best performance. Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow seems to be having fun, and she looks great in a thong. However for me I would have preferred to see her in the fat suit more, to highlight what everyone else was seeing.... But I suppose you don't pay millions to have Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie, and have her hide in a fat suit for the majority of the movie.Jason Alexender is very annoying (as Blacks bitter best friend, who is annoyed at losing his wing man on nights out) and distracting with his bizarre hairline. It's silly if course (it's a Farrelly brothers movie) but it's also very very sweet!!

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