The 2001 rom-com Shallow Hal was added to Hulu this month and it’s doing surprisingly well in spite of its controversial history. The movie stars Jack Black as Hal Larson, a superficial man who is hypnotized into seeing women for their inner beauty, not their looks, while Gwyneth Paltrow plays Rosie Shanahan, the obese woman he falls in love with. At the time of this writing Shallow Hal is the number three movie on Hulu and the number 15 title on the platform overall.
Shallow Hal was directed by the Farrelly Brothers, Peter and Bobby, who co-wrote the script with Sean Moynihan. It was one of the first leading roles for Black and a surprising role for Paltrow, who was coming off a string of period pieces and critical acclaim. From the very first trailer, the movie raised some eyebrows for its cartoonish depictions overweight people, its mocking tone and its easy redemption of Hal. Still, it was a commercial success at the time so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that it is dominating the Hulu charts over two decades later.
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The movie begins with Hal approaching the dating scene in night clubs with open arrogance and being rejected for it. Later, he becomes trapped in an elevator with life coach Tony Robbins – who plays himself – and explains his dilemma. Robbins hypnotizes Hal so that he will see women for their “inner beauty” not their physical appearance, though Hal does not know it at the time. Once they escape the elevator, Hal sees beautiful women all around him but the audience is shown that many of these women are overweight. Playing their appearances for physical comedy did not sit well with many critics at the time.
The Farrelly brothers pushed back on those kinds of criticisms. In an interview with The Chicago Tribune, Peter Farrelly pointed out that their previous movies had used similarly silly physical comedy to poke fun at people of all shapes and sizes. He also made the case that the movie had a real moral center in spite of “a few cheap shots,” and that it was not “one big fat joke.” Many people – including the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance – disagreed.
More recently, the movie made headlines in 2020 when Gwyneth Paltrow admitted that she regrets starring in it. In an interview with Netflix, Paltrow said that Shallow Hal is the movie she regrets doing the most in her career. She said: “The first day I tried the fat suit on, I was in the Tribeca Grand and I walked through the lobby. It was so sad. It was so disturbing. No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese. For some reason the clothes they make for women that are overweight are horrible. I felt humiliated because people were really dismissive.”
Still, the movies failings may present a learning experience to modern audiences in retrospect, and some insight about how media representation evolves over time. Shallow Hal is streaming now on Hulu.
