Shallow Hal (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Back when I was about university age, there wasn't much in the way of edgy comedy. Most stand-ups told the predictable in-law jokes, and even the innovators like Robert Klein and George Carlin didn't have much of an instinct for the jugular.

The exception was Don Rickles. When you get right down to it, he wasn't all that inventive, but he exhibited a talent for being able to say the things that people usually think but keep to themselves, and that could be a breath of fresh air in the Ozzie and Harriet universe of 1960's mainstream entertainment. Let's face it, calling somebody a "hockey puck" isn't really funny, but Rickles would do it as tension-breaking comic relief in a formal state gathering or something like that. It was always fun to see him poke fun at sacred cows like Sinatra and Jerry Lewis.

I kinda liked Don Rickles, but he had one schtick that I despised. At the end of his shows he would make some sappy speech about how he was only kidding, and he really loved all the people he made fun of, and his life was worthwhile if he could only bring one smile to a crippled child .... blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

This film, Shallow Hal, is the Farrelly Brothers version of Rickles' sentimental conclusions. After they have spent years making fun of the crippled, the retarded, the deformed and even the normal, they are now giving us a lecture on how beautiful people are inside, if we are only willing to look past their unibrows and iron lungs.

Hal measures all romantic relationships by superficial yardsticks. When asked "what if you had to choose between a woman with one breast and a woman with half a brain?", his response is, "how nice is the other breast?"

One day, Hal meets late-nite infomercial king Tony Robbins (playing himself) in an elevator, the elevator gets stuck, they get to talking, and Robbins imparts some type of hypnotic suggestion which allows Hal to see people from then on as they really are inside, rather than as they appear externally. In his new weltanschauung, kind but ugly people look like hunks and supermodels, while money-grubbing beauties look like crones. Since Hal is now hitting on a steady diet of fat ugly chicks, he starts to have unprecedented success with women, and he's happy because in his own perceptions he seems to be scoring with the entire Ford Modeling Agency. Unfortunately, his buddy realizes that something is wrong, and wants his happy friend "cured" of his delusional behavior.

I'll bet you can figure out how it will end, eh?

It's a strange cross between a gross Farrelly comedy and a sappy romantic comedy. I laughed at a few things here and there, but found myself turning away in embarrassment when it turned serious, just as I did in Rickles's finales.

A few comments:

• Jack Black as the romantic lead? Back to the height thing. Jack Black is listed at his honest height of 5'4", about five or six inches shorter than Gwyneth. Jason Alexander is listed at 5'5", but is substantially shorter than Black.
• Jason Alexander plays George Costanza, except his name is Mauricio Wilson. To me, Alexander is not very convincing as an ethnic Costanza or an ethnic Mauricio. Did you know his real name is Jason Greenspan? His characters should all be named Irving or Seymour. And they should be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
• I don't know, I guess it's just me, but I didn't think Hal was that shallow at all. On the other hand, even I noticed that his dad was a bit superficial.
• The guy who played Gwyneth Paltrow's dad was Joe Viterelli, who always plays Italian-American mobsters. This time, he plays an Irish immigrant with the silliest accent this side of Chief O'Hara on Batman. Faith 'n he carries a shillelagh at all times. I didn't make that up, me boyos.