Rating: NNN
SHALLOW HAL (Bobby and Peter Farrelly) stars Jack Black (High Fidelity) as a man whose brief encounter with self-help guru Tony Robbins (looking, with the goatee, like the parade-float version of Ben Affleck) enables him to see inner beauty. This lands him with a morbidly obese young woman whom he perceives as Gwyneth Paltrow, here lit by the Farrelly brothers as a goddess. Black is a bit wearing as a lead, but Paltrow is very fine, convincing us through slight alterations of body language and inflections of her voice that she really is someone whom nobody has ever found attractive. Hard to say what’s more remarkable — that the Farrellys, heretofore responsible for There’s Something About Mary and Kingpin, would try to make a touching comedy, or that they succeed. 115 minutes. NNN.
