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User Reviews for: Shallow Hal

Kamurai
/10  4 years ago
Really good watch, could watch again, and can recommend.

Now, I'm honestly not the biggest fans of this cast: Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jason Alexander, but that's not to discredit their acting abilities, and I don't just limit that to these performances as everyone did a great job.

Because of the complexity of the story itself, they clearly wanted to make this as silly and palatable as possible so everything essentially has rounded corners and rubberized edges. Hal is purposely left as a generic stock character to endear the audience as lesser but relatable, when it's actually a representation of the expectant audience. Mauricio is clearly a similar representation of our self-loathing, self-sabotaging selves: anytime we actually get something we think we might not deserve we take it away. Even Rosemarie is a generic representation of women's self-view (granted it is wildly simplified in this "guy's" movie), and by "blurring" the view between taught beauty (very clearly Jack learned from his dad) and personal connection you're able to find real happiness with people that might actually matter to you past an image.

I and the movie aren't "glorifying fatness" (people say weird stuff), you should of course continue to work and be the best version of you that you can be, but "but he/she/it is fat" shouldn't be the only factor.

It touches on real issues in the work and that ruins the escapism for me a little bit, but it does it in such a odd, fun, philosophical way it's easy enough to overlook.
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