Hot and Heavy

know it may be sacrilegious to say this on a college campus where one out of every five students count Dumb and Dumber as one of their all-time favorite movies, but I must admit that I am not the biggest fan of the Farrelly brothers.

The directors who also brought us There's Something About Mary and Me, Myself & Irene, bring a gross-out humor to all of their comedies that too often miss the mark and usually fall short on the cleverness.

But with Shallow Hal, the Farrelly brothers redeem themselves a little bit. This isn't a great movie, and it may be a stretch to call it a good movie, but it's difficult to say that it doesn't have heart.

Shallow Hal is essentially a pitch film. Every scene, every joke and every sight gag is built upon the same concept: What would happen if a really shallow guy (Hal), is hypnotized into seeing only the inner beauty of women? Thus, fat and ugly women with hearts of gold would look like, well, Gwyneth Paltrow, and uncaring and spiteful women--attractive though they may be--look like Rosie O'Donnell.

It's a funny idea, and though the fat jokes grow tiresome toward the end, the Farrelly brothers succeed in not running the concept too far into the ground. The actors deserve most of the credit for the success of Shallow Hal. Jack Black as Hal and Paltrow as Rosemary bring the perfect degree of compassion to their characters, and Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame instills new life into the traditional best friend-loser role.

Black is fresh off of his breakthrough role in High Fidelity, and while I'm unsure about his place among other leading men in Hollywood, he pulls off the transition between superficial jerk and caring twentysomething with ease.

And although it's quite a shock to see Paltrow in a fat suit, she proves once again why she is one of the best actors of her generation. We see most of the film through Jack's eyes--and therefore see Rosemary, though over 400 pounds, as thin and gorgeous--and it is at once bizarre and powerful to see her so fully at peace with her weight.

There is, however, an off-putting irony that underlies the film. Shallow Hal's message is that beauty is only skin deep (or is in the eye of the beholder, whichever you prefer). But the way that beautiful women are paraded across the screen is another example of Hollywood's obsession with pencil-thin bombshells. And--Earth to the Farrelly brothers--beautiful women are not only spiteful idiots, and unattractive women are not all do-gooders.