Posted: 11/27/2001

Shallow Hal

(2001)

by Hank Yuloff

Another comedy masterpiece from the boys who bought us There’s Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, and Kingpin. So sensitive towards a woman’s true feelings, these guys!

It has a funny premise which could really turn out to be very scary. An hour and a half of the same fat joke over and over. Thank God it was directed by the Farrelly Brothers (Something About Mary), and not any of those fine folk over at Saturday Night Live (Superstar, It’s Pat, The Ladies Man).

Hal Larson is a completely self-involved fop who is constantly on the make for 9’s and above. It’s not his fault, really, as he was only following his father’s dying wish that he never settled for inferior (insert unacceptable for print reference to female genitalia here). He and his best friend Mauricio Wilson (Jason Alexander from Seinfeld) spend their time hunting for good looking women who, because of the guys looks and attitude, want nothing to do with them.

It begins to look like that SNL skit which spawned A Night At The Roxbury until Larson is stuck in an elevator with self-improvement guru Tony Robbins. In a several hour private session, Robbins “hypnotizes” Hal so that he only sees the goodness in people. The good ones will appear beautiful, regardless of their real looks. The bad ones look like Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety. While in this state of mind, Hal meets Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), a 300-pound beauty who to Hal, looks like, well, Gwyneth Paltrow. They begin a love affair that follows the old movie formula of “Boy meets Girl, Boy Gets Girl, Boy loses Girl… And will he get her back in the end?”

Casting Jack Black as Hal was perfect. He is not the ugliest guy around but he is no Brad Pitt, either. That made it believable that most women would not find him attractive once you threw in the fact that he was horribly obnoxious. When producers don’t make that match, it brings the whole movie down… like when Janeane Garofalo was cast as an ugly girl in The Truth About Cats & Dogs. That didn’t work but in Shallow Hal, Black works perfectly. If you missed last year’s High Fidelity or this year’s Saving Silverman, they are excellent movies to see more of Jack Black. He is a very talented, funny guy.

One thing that does not work as a plot line is that Hal’s friend Mauricio Wilson has a BEAUTIFUL woman (Sascha Knopf as Tanya) throwing herself at him and he does not go for it because one of her toes is longer than the big toe. Speaking for those of us toiling for FilmMonthly.com that didn’t regularly date cheerleaders (took one to my prom, however), Wilson’s character shouldn’t have ever been seen. He should have been calling Hal from his bedroom where he and Tanya were in the constant throes of passion. This was about as stupid a story line as you will ever have to live through. Like the entire plot of Dracula 2000. Wilson was not much of a stretch for Alexander. He played the same guy on Seinfeld for 9 years.

Shallow Hal is cute. It’s funny. It makes fun of large folk. It makes fun of shallow folk. It also shows that the $1000 you just spent for that Tony Robbins seminar is probably a good investment.

Hank Yuloff is an advertising guy in Los Angeles who met his personal Gwyneth Paltrow back in 1988 when Sharyn came into his life. Hot, baby!

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