Jokes have victims. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't have a sense of humor. Jokes have victims, and somebody gets hurt, and that's the whole point of jokes. Sometimes you can let your victims in on to the joke as a consolation. Other times you can make the jokes intentionally unfunny as a way of reversing victimhood into herohood. But you can't do both at once.
The problem with the Farrelly Brothers' \Shallow Hal"" is that they never choose. It got to the point that I was begging them to. Surrounded by a sea of audience that laughed at all the mean parts and snorted at all the sweet ones, I sat there pleading with the two Farrellys to do the right thing. But they didn't, and that marred what was, for the most part, a really good movie.
Jack Black plays Hal, a sweet lump of a guy who goes after only the most physically perfect women. After an accidental hypnosis session with self-helper Tony Robbins, though, Jack can only see the inner beauty of people. Thus Jack falls for Rosemary, a funny, generous and obese woman Jack sees as the lithe Gwyneth Paltrow. This throws Hal's shallower friend Maurice (Jason Alexander) for a loop that threatens to ruin Hal and Rosemary's lovely relationship.
Everyone involved keeps calling ""Shallow Hal"" a ""love letter to fat people,"" and in a way, it is. Stripped of the prejudice of first appearances, we are allowed to see that physically imperfect people have to develop kind and funny personalities in order to survive. In general, that's an accurate point, though I've known a few fat and ugly people who matched up on the inside.
And, ""Shallow Hal"" makes its point well by casting the wonderful Paltrow. She salvages the film with a great performance, managing to convey the dueling fragility and strength of Rosemary. When Black can't stop complimenting her, Paltrow seems confused and then hurt, suggesting she's been burned before. But, at her introduction to the rude Alexander, Paltrow shows that Rosemary has learned to defend herself with lines like, ""Does that jacket say 'Members Only'? What'are you like the last member?"" Paltrow is the strength of the film.
However, the weaknesses she overcomes are big ones, and they lie at the core of ""Shallow Hal."" A love letter to fat people shouldn't include the argument that fat people are disgusting. The Farrellys should know their audience. High school kids, with their faddish tiny backpacks and their upturned visors, don't distinguish between the filmmakers real sentiments and those spouted by the ignorant characters in the film. Nor do early middle-aged SUV accessory salespeople, passing time before they hit the bars.
Just because the insensitive Maurice is the one making comments about cankles (the melding of the calf and the ankle) doesn't mean the Farrellys' target audience will feel sympathy for the jokes' victim. At the end of ""Shallow Hal,"" I looked down and saw some young high school kid with huge white tennis shoes, who had previously been trying to impress some girls with his brave rudeness. He squirmed and covered his eyes at the real Rosemary. Now, if the Farrellys intended to write a love letter to fat people, maybe they should have done it with fewer typos, because this kid must have just seen the fat jokes and none of the sweetness and honesty of the rest of the film.
If you do like ""Shallow Hal,"" you'd probably like the mix of sweetness and grossness in the rest of the Farrelly Brothers' films. Or, you might look for the better Chris Farley or Adam Sandler films, which can occasionally pull it off.
