"Shallow Hal"

2001
-directed by the Farrelly Brothers
One of the funniest, most thought-provoking movies i know, perhaps the most singularly successful conjunction of those two qualities in one film ever...the only really overt "issue" film i can think of that almost totally transcends its message.
And it's also an object lesson in how subjective our responses are. I know people whose taste in comedy i often share, who think this film is dreck. Usually these people are huge Farrelly Brother fans, while i'm only a mild fan of the rest of their work. Is HAL only so resonant with me because it pushes my buttons? For much of my life, i've walked around with a faint air of self-satisfaction at being less shallow than most of the idiots in the world (i'm the guy whose hackles raise when someone suggests Lyle Lovett is "ugly"). This movie threatens to de-pants my smugness.
Jack Black is perfect, and Gwyneth Paltrow gives a dual (but not) performance that ranks with the greatest ever. Jason Alexander is spot-on as Hal's neurotic and equally shallow buddy Mauricio. Anthony Robbins' two scenes are priceless, even a smidgen funnier than the rest of this hysterical movie. Is he spoofing himself? Somehow, yes and no. I was strongly predisposed to always considering him a parasitic wanker, but now i'll love him always. Susan Ward, as Hal's stunning neighbor Jill, must have been uber-thrilled with her part, given the shallow roles she usually gets. She's fantastic. The rest of the cast is excellent, some of them in dual roles like Gwyneth's...rarely have i seen an entire ensemble nail just the right values, without fail. No small amount of the credit for that probably rests with creators Peter and Bobby.
Hal's relationships with women have always been awash in shallowness. Robbins hypnotizes him into seeing only the inner beauty of everyone he meets. He embarks on a grand romance with 300-pound Rosemary...in his eyes, she's Gwyneth at her most slender. When Mauricio convinces Tony to remove the hypnosis, it all falls apart. There are one or two moments when the movie feels the tiniest bit facile. Do we really buy that Hal would reject Jill, when she decides he's not the shallow twit she thought he was? No...we don't. Do we really buy that Hal, at the end, wants to spend the rest of his life with Rosie? Hmmmmmm. We're undecided. But in the moment, we go with it, because the film's so perfect. Above all, would we like a window into the lives of those who created this film, to find out whether they live up to these non-shallow ideals? Yes we would.
There are moments of tear-inducing poignance, centered on Hal's interactions with the children in the burn ward. His ability to "see" their inner selves, an ability he re-finds once he's no longer hypnotized, we go along with happily.
So why does this film push my buttons so?
Shallow wrob?
I've always been aware that i'm not attracted to fat women...athletic is my type. And there has always been a part of me that feels a pang of guilt at the thought that my chubby-aversion is societally-taught. The few times i've come close to sexual involvement with a fat woman, a voice pops up: "Nope...not working". Oh, i've had one or two lovers who had extra weight, and it didn't really bother me. But too, if those women had lost those 10-15 pounds, would i have pursued them more? That's gut-check honesty time, and the answer may be yes.
There's another voice that seeks to defend my "shallowness", however. Sexual attraction involves motivations that we are nowhere near fully aware of, and it is simply a fact that sexuality is about spreading our genes, and that our bodies have an agenda. The average person is a laughable puppet in biology's hands. If you'd like a window into this reality that might blow your mind, read "The Myth of Monogamy", by David Barash and Judith Lipton.
Is that rationale a dosing of bullshit? If i lived in a society that held up chubby girls as beauty's ideal, would i be a chubby chaser? I hate to confess that i might. Or maybe i'm selling myself short - i did, after all, reject my society's ideal of the "skinny woman with big boobs".
There's a woman who works at my local post office. She carries herself with far more joy than the average person, and she and i share a lovely spark. I fantasize about loving her. She also carries maybe fifty extra pounds. And i'm NOT operating from a societal perspective that expects a woman to be unhealthily thin. So my urge to open up to her, clams up when we talk.
Will i change that? Would that be a great/awful idea?
Anyway...
The movie's bloody marvelous. Watch it now.