Shallow Hal (2001)

Shallow Hal arrives from 2001, a moment when the Farrelly brothers could build an entire studio comedy around a 25-pound fat suit and call the result a parable about inner beauty. Jack Black plays Hal, a man hypnotized by Tony Robbins into perceiving the virtues of women instead of their measurements. The conceit is generous on paper. On screen it is a machine for punchlines about bodies, and the bodies belong almost exclusively to women who are not Gwyneth Paltrow.

The film's moral is stated plainly and repeated often, which is its own kind of sermonizing. Rosemary, the 300-pound love interest, appears to Hal as a slender blonde, and the audience is invited to laugh at the gap between the two. A 25-pound suit and prosthetic makeup carry the joke, and Paltrow has since expressed regret about the whole enterprise. Her body double, Ivy Snitzer, developed an eating disorder after the release. That is not subtext. That is a production note with a body count of one.

There is a genuine gesture toward the disabled and the scarred, with Rene Kirby cast in a role shaped by his spina bifida, and a burned child who teaches Hal to see. The film means well in the way a man means well when he tells you he prefers personality. It remains a broad comedy, not a tract, and its sincerity is real enough to keep it from being merely cruel. But the gaze never leaves Hal's head, and the lesson is delivered to him, about women, by a self-help guru. The result is a fable that congratulates its hero for learning what the audience already knew, and charges the women in the frame for the tuition.