Shallow Hal

REVIEW
Remove the teeth from a shark, and without its bite it probably won't prove to be too much of a threat. The same can be said of the Farrelly brothers, if their bland comedy Shallow Hal is any indication. The writer-director brothers have made a career on their excessive humor, teetering somewhere near tastelessness but usually managing to be funny. Here, they've softened their humor, even getting sentimental and all warm and fuzzy. The result is akin to being gummed to death by that toothless shark. Black is Hal, a superficial womanizer who judges women only on their looks. After a meeting with self-help guru Roberts (playing himself), he begins to see the inner beauty of people, and falls for the overweight Rosemary, who he sees as looking like Gwyneth Paltrow. A series of fat jokes follow, mostly from Hal's equally shallow friend Mauricio (Alexander). In downplaying the edgy comedy for misplaced sensitivity, the Farrellys have no room to expand upon the premise, ultimately never establishing a rhythm, or being able to develop the tame comic set-ups that leave them no place to go.