I FEEL PRETTY – Review

I FEEL PRETTY is an under-written romantic comedy with an obvious message about what’s important in life. Amy Schumer stars as Renee Bennett, a 30-ish single gal despondent with the way she looks, believing she’ll never find happiness because she’s not “undeniably pretty”. She works for the Lily LeClaire beauty products company, but they keep her in a basement office, out of sight of their clientele. As an average-size woman (slightly overweight), Renee must suffer the indignity of having to wear double-wide shoes and be told that she should look for clothes her size on line. She wishes for the miracle of physical beauty, and after throwing a coin in a fountain fails to do the trick, she whacks her head on an exercise bike during a SoulCycle class, and is knocked unconscious. She wakes up, looks in the mirror and sees herself as slim and gorgeous, but to the audience, and everyone else, she looks exactly the same. She then proceeds to ‘live her best life’ with the self-confidence that stereotypically hot chicks are supposed to have. She struts by a construction crew who throw her a wolf whistle (it’s not aimed at her), has doors opened by strange men (by accident), and assumes Ethan (Rory Scovell), the nice guy she meets at the dry cleaner wants her phone number when he’s really just asking if she’s next  in line. Renee is usually met with eye rolls and bewildered reactions when she talks so highly of herself and her appearance, especially from her two best friends played Busy Phillips and Aidy Bryant (the only other women in the cast who don’t look like models). Her newfound confidence soon helps her rise within the ranks of Lily LeClaire.

I FEEL PRETTY is hit-and-miss, mostly miss, and too dependent on cheap sitcom gimmicks to power its plot. Co-writers/directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein throw a lot of comic ideas onto the screen and while there’s a laugh here and there, the script is never nearly as smart as Schumer’s own screenplay for TRAINWRECK (the PG-13 neutering doesn’t help). Here it’s the physical comedy that works more than the dialog. The funniest sequence is when Renee and Ethan go to a bar where she impulsively enters a bikini contest to show off her perceived new figure. Watching a chubby gal shimmy like a stripper is a cheap laugh, but in context it works because of Ms Schumer’s energy and enthusiasm in that scene and the fact that Renee is comfortable enough in that body to dance in her undies, seductively stick her fingers in customer’s mouths, and pour pitchers of water on herself. It’s a happy, liberating moment – the highlight of the film. I still feel Ms Schumer lacks big-screen charisma and the appeal to carry a feature. She plays things far too broadly as though she’s acting in her sitcom. This is most apparent in her scenes with Michelle Williams, who plays Avery LeClaire, the beautiful CEO of this makeup company who takes Renee under her wing. Williams brings more depth to this character, one with self-confidence issues of her own because of her squeaky voice, than Schumer can. It’s not that Avery is a better-written role (and the character ultimately goes nowhere interesting), but that Williams uses her considerable movie star talents to make the most of what the script gives her. Another scene-stealer is Adrian Martinez as Mason, Renee’s basement office mate before her transformation. He shows terrific comic timing in a hilarious scene where he really doesn’t want to converse with Renee while he’s taking a dump.

Some are accusing I FEEL PRETTY of a certain tone-deafness in terms of “fat-shaming”. An angry writer named Katie Stow at Cosmopolitan was enraged about I FEEL PRETTY (after only seeing the trailer!). In her profanity-filled article this week titled ‘Amy Schumer’s New Movie is Problematic as F*ck’, (read HERE if you dare) she claims “my feels were mainly sitting on the extremely pissed-off side of the scale” and warns “prepare yourself for some rage”. She also complains about the film’s “skinny shaming” and notes that there are too many white people onscreen. Yikes! I feel bad for Ms Stow that her blood boils so intensely over a silly movie, but I still like the bikini contest scene. Sure, the movie’s inner-beauty message might fly better if the jokes were stronger, but the script doesn’t pick on the people with whom the filmmakers are empathizing and shouldn’t be accused of doing so. I’m not the target audience for I FEEL PRETTY. Women who laugh easily, especially if they attend with a group of friends, will likely have a fun time with it. I don’t think it’s a very good movie, but it’s hardly offensive.

2 of 5 Stars