Shallow Hal

Compared with the Farrelly brothers' previous films "There's Something about Mary" and "Me, Myself & Irene", whose humour could almost be described as boundary-breaking, Shallow Hal is a rather tame affair.

The protagonist Hal Larson is a perfectly ordinary guy who sets unusually high standards for his dream girl's looks. Beauty is the only thing Hal judges a woman by. Since he is not exactly a catch himself, it is no surprise that he has trouble landing a girl.

After a chance meeting with a pop psychologist, Hal becomes able to see only women's inner beauty, so when he meets the sweet but hugely overweight Rosemary, she looks like the rail-thin Gwyneth Paltrow. This gives rise to quite a few comic situations. For example, Hal does not understand why the chair keeps collapsing under his beloved.

Hal naturally has to discover how things really stand, but the story drags on before it reaches an ending that is entirely in the spirit of this politically correct film.