英文影评: 庸人哈尔 Shallow Hal review by TOR THORSEN

英文影评: 庸人哈尔 Shallow Hal review by TOR THORSEN

庸人哈尔,Shallow Hal

The trailer for Shallow Hal makes it seem like a startlingly insensitive comedy that mocks fat people — or plus-sized people, or people of circumference, or whatever term is least offensive — for cheap laughs. In it, we see Hal (Jack Black), a boorish pig obsessed with bagging hotties, being cured of his superficial ways via hypnotism by motivational speaker Tony Robbins. From that point on, he sees only women's inner beauty. To him, wart-faced hags look like the Noxzema Girl and the decidedly hefty look like svelte models.

Hal's perceptive discrepancy is played for comic effect when he begins dating Rosemary, a sweet blonde who has as much avoirdupois as she does heart. While everyone else sees her true girth — and often make nasty comments about it — Hal perceives Rosemary as a dead ringer for pixieish waif Gwyneth Paltrow, even when furniture buckles under her massive weight.

 

But, by playing her plumpness for such cheap laughs, aren't directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly just as bad as the jerks calling Rosemary a "rhino?" Sure, heavyset folks are the butt of infinite jokes, but doesn't a comedy that specifically targets the obese just seem wrong? What's next? The Blind News Bears? That Darn Cripple? Forget Me Not: The Alzheimer's Follies?

 

Sensing they've crossed the boundaries of good taste (again), the Farrellys heap on the sweet-natured shtick like a humpback whale at a krill buffet. Despite the protestations of Hal's sleazy friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander, playing George Costanza's evil brother) that she's huge with a capital H, Hal really starts falling in love with Rosemary. Even when, about two-thirds into the film, he loses his "gift" and starts seeing women for what they really are, Hal still has feelings for his rotund lover, but is hesitant to face her for fear his shallow side will resurface.

 

As further penance for all its "let's-laugh-at-Tubby" japes, Shallow Hal shifts into melodrama mode in the final act. While a melancholy piano tinkles in the background, Hal mournfully stares at the ground, expressing disgust with his own skin-deep sense of aesthetics. In a particularly exploitative scene, he travels back to the children's hospital ward where Rosemary worked, only to find all those button-cute kids he thought he saw are actually horrifically disfigured. Finally, we see Rosemary in her true form (i.e. Gwyneth in a fat suit), weeping bitter tears of rejection after catching Hal having dinner with his trim-'n'-toned next-door neighbor Jill (Susan Ward). www.130q.com

 

The fact that Jill's — and many other people's appearances — don't change when Hal's perceptions do is another of Shallow Hal's shortcomings. Does this mean she's as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside? And what about Hal's bald, pot-bellied office mate (played by Black's Tenacious D band-mate Kyle Gass) or his raspberry-nosed boss (Joe Viterelli) — both seem like nice guys, but look severely beaten with the ugly stick before, during, and after Hal's transformation.

 

Most disturbing is the film's hypocrisy. For all their preaching about how people are more beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside, the Farrellys and co-writer Sean Moynihan take every opportunity to ogle Paltrow in see-through negligees and skin-tight hot pants. You can't blame her, though: Paltrow's rail-thin frame may be the envy of anorexics everywhere, but the actress does a fine job portraying a sensitive but strong woman painfully aware of her thickset figure (a situation she presumably has never had to face herself). That's the problem: By preaching that beauty comes from within while simultaneously leering at slender examples of the female form and poking fun at the portly, Shallow Hal undermines its own message. Like the most corpulent food addict, it tries to have its cake, and eat it too.

 

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