Shallow Hal Blu-ray Review
Beauty is in the eye of the Farrelly Brothers.
Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, February 17, 2012
For a brief window in the late 1990s and early '00s, the Farrelly brothers were the kings of gross-out comedy, with a string of four movies--
Dumb
and Dumber,
Kingpin,
There's Something About Mary, and
Me, Myself & Irene--that revel in
eww-inducing body
fluid gags, like the now-infamous scene in
Mary, where Cameron Diaz mistakes a gloopy strand of errant ejaculate for hair gel. (Haven't we
all?) But when the market became flooded with me-too imitators, the Farrellys changed up their routine with 2001's
Shallow Hal, toning down
the disgustingness and ratcheting up the sweetness. More so, they made a film that's positively
moral, a body-image satire that tries to
promote a "don't judge a book by its cover" message. (I say
tries because it goes about it in a rather back-asswards way, but we'll get to that
in a second.) Of course, most people remember it as "that movie with Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit," and yes, that's probably the film's defining
characteristic. It's easy to dismiss Gwyneth as a tone-deaf movie star whose luxury living advice--by way of her GOOP e-mail newsletter--spits in the
face of recession-riddled middle class America, but you've got to give credit where credit is due; she was game enough to take on this very
uncharacteristic role. I mean, no one could've foreseen Gwyneth Paltrow with cankles.
The film gets off to a
very Farrelly brothers start with a terminally ill father who, with his dying breaths, tells his chubby son to "never settle
for routine poontang." (Sadder last words were never spoken.) The kid heeds his dad's advice and grows up to be the shallow Hal Larson (Jack Black) of
the title, a portly shlub who tries in vain to date
way out of his league. Hal spends most of his evenings cruising nightclubs, delusionally
dancing up on models who wouldn't give him the time of day, working in tandem with his wingman, Mauricio (
Seinfeld's Jason Alexander), an
even shlubier shlub with spray-on hair and a Member's Only jacket. ("So, what are you, like, the last member?" someone asks him.) These tools don't
even appreciate the women they
can get. Mauricio dumps his reasonably attractive, well-endowed girlfriend because her second toe is half an
inch longer than her first toe, and, as he so delicately puts it, he doesn't "need that circus s--t." They're prime examples of dudes who put down ladies
to overcompensate for their own glaring physical deficiencies. By chance, Hal gets stuck in an elevator with self-help guru Tony Robbins, genially
playing himself. (In one of the film's best lines, Hal says Tony's fingers are so big it's like "shaking hands with a bunch of bananas.") After a long tirade
where Hal explains the impossibility of finding the "perfect" woman--who would have Heidi Klum's eyes, Britney Spears' T&A, and Rebecca Romijn-
Stamos' smile--Tony hypnotizes him so that he can only see
inner beauty.
And here we have the film's ongoing visual gimmick. If a woman is goodhearted or has a "great personality"--the age-long standard-issue concession
for the less pretty--Hal sees her as a perfect-10 knockout. This is the case when he meets and falls for Rosemary Shanahan (Paltrow), a nurse and
former Peace Corps volunteer who's sweet, self-effacing, and kind. To the rest of the world, she's a morbidly obese, milkshake-guzzling frump, but
when we switch to Hal's perspective, she looks like...well...Gwyneth Paltrow, a stunning blond with a rail-thin runway body. Maybe it's just me, but for
a film that's supposedly about looking beyond skin deep, doesn't it seem a little backwards that the film's manifestation of inner beauty also happens to
be society's ideal for
outer beauty? Wouldn't it make more sense for Hal to simply see Rosemary
as she is--overweight, yes, but a
wonderful person--and leave it at that? The illogic upsets the whole premise if you think about it, but the Farrellys aren't really expecting us to think.
They want us to
feel, and they turn the film into a series of elaborate fat jokes that somehow simultaneously make us laugh while feeling
guilty for laughing. Like when Rosemary continually breaks chairs at restaurants because she's too heavy, or when she weighs down the front of a
canoe so that Hal--in the rear--is see-sawed up out of the water. The most memorable sight-gag comes when the petite vision of Rosemary peels off
her skimpy panties and then tosses them to Hal, who's eagerly waiting in bed and unfolds them to reveal how unbelievably huge they actually are.
"What in the...? How did...? Get over here Houdini."
The film
is funny in patches, but it's not nearly as riotous as the Farrelly's earlier, cruder comedies. They go for a completely different vibe
here; more high-concept rom-com and less potty humor. (Although there is a pretty gross conjunctivitis gag, where Hal smears Vaseline over his eyes
to
make it look like he's highly contagious.) The Farrelly's have always had a warm affinity for their characters--as dumb and dumber as they sometimes
are--but in
Shallow Hal they really focus on getting the emotional beats of the story right, and making Rosemary and Hal as real and relatable
as possible considering the out-there nature of the premise. Of course, Hal eventually becomes de-hypnotized, and this forces him to reevaluate his
relationship with Rosemary, which is further complicated by the fact that her dad--played by the curmudgeonly Joe Viterelli--is his boss. There are no
surprises in store when it comes to the direction the plot eventually takes--this is a story about a man learning to become less superficial, after all; it's
not like Hal is going to go back to being an ass--but the film manages to earn the sweetness of its ending. The performances sell it. Jack Black dials
down his usual manic puppy-dog act a few notches--he's actually likable rather than merely tolerable--and as always, Jason Alexander makes a good
comic foil, the sidekick who's incredulous of the protagonist's actions. But this is Gwyneth Paltrow's movie, and it really is remarkable how well she
projects low self-esteem, even when she's not in the fat suit. I'll take
Shallow Hal Gwyneth over
Country Strong Gwynnie any day.
Shallow Hal Blu-ray, Video Quality
Like
Fever Pitch,
Shallow Hal arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's watchable but looks noticably dated, as if it
was prepared from an old master originally intended for DVD. I'm not positive this is the case, mind you, but regardless--high definition eye candy this
ain't. While
Hal doesn't have the edge enhancement issues that crop up on
Fever Pitch, the image is consistantly soft and fairly noisy,
with a thick grain structure that also seems overlayed with chroma noise. Clarity is better than the DVD, of course, but not drastically so. Facial and
clothing textures are slightly more refined, but you never see the level of extremely fine detail that's apparent in the best Blu-ray transfers. Color fares
betters; it's bright and vivid without being oversatured, and though white highlights are sometimes blown out--I suspect this is an intentional choice on
cinematographer Russell Carpenter's part--the picture has a nice sense of punch and contrast. This is no must-buy upgrade, and I'm almost certain the
film could look better, but if you must own
Shallow Hal, this is definitely the version to get.
