Shallow Hal

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit—it’s funny, see, ’cause she’s skinny. And skinny people in fat suits are funny, at least according to the two people who actually watch Jiminy Glick. Oh, and Jack Black? You see, he looks like he’s been sculpted out of Marshmallow Fluff, and yet he’s repulsed by fat people. And that’s funny, see, ’cause he’s fat. If you’re looking for more jokes than those, you’d better check another theater.The Farrelly Brothers can usually be relied upon to deliver the chuckles, and there are moments in Shallow Hal when they do (most notably, the elevator scene between Black and self-help guru Tony Robbins—it’s the only chance Black gets to cut loose). But overall it seems like these guys have run out of steam. In each of their previous movies, they’ve thrown some sort of freakishness into to mix to keep things interesting (think Woody Harrelson’s hand in Kingpin, the albino psychopath in Me, Myself & Irene, Chris Elliot’s hives in Something About Mary), but here it all seems forced and extraneous. It’s like they know people expect it, so they have to put it in even it it brings nothing to the story. Hey, look…a guy with spina bifida! Hey, look…Jason Alexander has extra body parts! Shallow Hal is a lame one-joke movie that doesn’t offend by being offensive, it offends by being dull.

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