Todays day and age where in superficiality matters more than content. A good advertisement sells an average product. Marketing and packaging are new age fundamentals for any products saleability.......These fundamentals have somehow made us as a race very obsessed with visual enhancements.
In a day and age where beauty is tampered with to be ’’accepted’’ in various walks of an individuals life.Shallow Hal comes as a refreshing comedy that talks about the superficial web of our society that judges the beautiful and not so beautiful in everyone.
Hal is the typical urban male who has set ideologies on whose ’’dateable’’ material and whose not.He is backed by his friend Mauricio who has his own issues on whose hot and whose not.
Though both the friends are not a visual delight themselves they have very high standards on whom they should be seen with.
Hal not being the choice of many a ladies list of ’’suit ables’’ finds himself caught in a perpetual dry spell (date wise).He lucks out when he finds himself trapped in an elevator with a self-help guru.On hearing Hals dilemma the guru hypnotizes him into seeing only the beauty in people.
Unaware of his special power he finds himself be-friending Rosemary a beautiful lithesome blonde who somehow responds to his advances.The catch here being that Rosemary in reality is a horizontally challenged girl (shes fat).
Rosemary at first is very skeptical about Hal as she is well aware of her so called shortcomings.Love is in the air when she finds herself enamored by Hals undivided attention towards her even in gawky and embarrassing situations......
The twist in the story arrives (there has to be a twist...how will the story progress?)
is when Hal is back to normal and can see people for the way they really are.On learning about Rosemary he is left with the dilemma of selecting love to appearances.....
Funny Moments-When Rosemary falls off her chair.
Hal kissing the maid thinking it is Rosemary.
Mauricio showing his physical deformity to Hal (a tail.....yes you read that right, a tail)
Touching Moments-On getting back to normal when Hal visits the paediatric burns unit of a hospital which he had previously visited with Rosemary and notices the burnt faces of the children(he could not see the burns earlier)
When he sees Rosemary for the first time after getting back to normal and the first thing he tells her is ’’your beautiful’’.
The story though being very predictable has many a light moments and many sentimental ones too.Over all a must see for those days when your questioning yourself on the need of going on a diet.....
A movie to cure your ’’ honey am I looking fat?’’ blues.