Shallow Hal (2001)

Great Film overall

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A shallow man falls in love with a 300 pound woman because of her "inner beauty". Despite being a comedy 'Shallow Hal' does in fact have some interesting messages to tell about love and how someone's heart is what matters instead of their face and their body, Jack Black is great as he always is in most of the films i have seen him in and Gwyneth Paltrow despite her dumb confension about her role she does a gret job as well. Overall a great mix of comedic and dramatic elements alongside a talented cast of actors. (A+)

even if it is a new take on an old idea - character sees someone's inner beauty and is shocked when the magical curtain is torn away.Hal (Jack Black) is someone whose last words from his dying father were dad - under the influence of extreme pain killing drugs - telling him to go after pretty girls and forget about love. The message is almost pornographic. This confuses young Hal, who is all of age ten, since dad had always been an upright citizen and a preacher too. Hal blocks this shocking scene out of his conscious mind, but the message becomes the ruler of his subconscious. As a result, as an adult, he is constantly going to bars with his equally shallow pal (Jason Alexander as Mauricio) and trying to chat up and dance with girls way out of his league, and he's not even subtle about it.Fate changes when Hal gets stuck in an elevator with Tony Robbins who puts him under a spell that will make him see only the inner beauty in people, not the external packaging. He winds up catching a glimpse of Rosemary Shanahan, who has a beautiful soul, but is also 300 pounds. At first she thinks he is just making fun of her, but when she finds out his interest is real they start seeing each other. The catch here? Her dad is Hal's boss, and he's been getting nowhere lately getting a promotion at work. One day when Hal and Rosemary come over to her house Hal ends up talking one on one with the boss, and ends up getting the promotion he's been wanting. Of course his coworkers see his progress, see him cozying up to Rosemary and think that he is lower than lice - using the girl to advance his career. As for Mauricio, he goes in search of Tony Robbins to try and undo whatever spell has been cast on his friend, because it is disrupting his social life and Hal's new aesthetics makes no sense to him.When Hal is put back to "normal", everybody now looks how they did before. Their physical being is what he sees. This means that he is doing everything he can to not actually see Rosemary since he is in love with her and doesn't want to lose that feeling. From Rosemary's end it looks like Hal got his promotion and is done with her. This is the same opinion that his new boss - who for some reason doesn't fire him - and his coworkers have. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.There is plenty of low brow humor here, but it is seasoned with a bit of empathy...EXCEPT that the film still indicates that being overweight is just about the worst thing that could happen to someone AND that the reason for that is always out of control gluttony. In other words if you are not a size five it is your own fault. I've never been a fan of Jack Black but I think he did a good job here. As for Jason Alexander, as Mauricio he is still playing George Costanza from Seinfeld, but that is fine with me.

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.

A very funny storyline and a great performance from all actors involved. I'm not usually a fan of Jack Black, I think you either love him or you hate him, but because of the 'laugh out loud' scenes he creates, I think you've got to take your hat off to him. After watching Shallow Hal, I went on to watch School of Rock, but that for me was terrible. All in all, a clever take on an everyday topic that I'm sure blokes all across the country talk about on a daily basis. One review I read said that Shallow Hal is often very funny, but also surprisingly moving at times. I'll side with that opinion. I would have rated higher if it were not for Jason Alexander starring, I can't stand Seinfeld.