I Feel Pretty filled with hate

Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. Image courtesy STXfilms.

The grand final moment of the perfectly boring I Feel Pretty is a rousing presentation from Amy Schumer's receptionist Renee about how real beauty is not found in a magazine. This is the selling point of the movie, the coda for self acceptance and inspiring women to be themselves. The movie sells this concept very, very hard in an attempt to distract the audience from the many minutes it spent undercutting that message. Woman should be empowered and proud to be whoever they are, except when they’re shamed for an attempt at a cheap laugh.

Admittedly, I Feel Pretty has a clever enough gimmick going for it. Making a body-swap movie in which no actual body swap occurs – Schumer's character gets bonked in the head and imagines herself as new, theoretically more attractive woman – has a lot of potential behind it. It's rife with opportunities for genre parody, societal snipes, or to simply mock some of the conventions of romantic comedies. With an actress like Schumer involved, along with ringers like Aidy Bryant and Busy Philipps in the mix, I Feel Pretty has the pieces needed to be a razor-sharp comedy. The problem though is the movie simply isn't that funny. The jokes are perfunctory, mean-spirited, and lazy, never rising to being as clever as its premise supposes. Schumer is trapped in this rather strange role in which the jokes are either about her or around her, rarely coming from Schumer herself. Instead, a high-voiced Michelle Williams, token love interest Rory Scovel, and a few additional random characters do much of the heavy comedic lifting. Writers/directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein – probably better known for the problematic Drew Barrymore vehicle Never Been Kissed – don't seem to have a lot of faith Schumer to carry I Feel Pretty, which is odd given Schumer's background in comedy and general subversive attitude.

Or, perhaps, they simply don't like her very much, because I Feel Pretty is often relentlessly mean toward Schumer's Renee. The fundamental problem the movie has is its abundance of disgust for Renee as a character, frequently portraying her as fat and homely because it’s easier to get laughs with minimal effort. Even when Renee bonks her head and imagines herself to be slim and gorgeous, I Feel Pretty zeroes in on the idea of Renee, and Schumer by extension, still not actually being conventionally beautiful. Some of the reason is based on the premise alone. The absence of a transformation and the movie's decision not to show what Renee thinks she looks like means the actions taking place are rooted in how the character actually looks. So little comments from Renee about being able to eat whatever she wants and maintaining her figure are not played out as an act of confidence, but one of delusion directed toward the character. The joke isn't about Renee, it's at her expense.

A movie about empowerment fails when it doesn't empower its main character. I Feel Pretty instead makes Renee out to be mostly awful. As her delusion deepens and she lives the life of a beautiful person, her behavior becomes just awful. Her newfound confidence is treated not as an important step toward her self improvement, but as a weapon toward her new persona’s downfall. The reason she begins to act as awful as she does is because she thinks she's beautiful, which is a really weird point to make in a movie that, again, is designed to celebrate its characters. There's no real reason Renee needs to become a shallow petty person; I Feel Pretty makes an assumption that conventional beauty results in inner ugliness.

Except for Emily Ratajkowski's Mallory, who pops in and out of I Feel Pretty to provide perspective about the traditionally beautiful. Her character seems like a decent enough person, supportive of Renee when they interact and crippled with thoughts of self-doubt and disappointment. But I Feel Pretty ends with her not getting a modelling gig, with Renee actively ripping the opportunity away because of Mallory’s appearance. It's a really, really unnecessary move that, again, undercuts that empowerment the movie wants to sell. In I Feel Pretty, any semblance of physical beauty is a failing, even if the person is beautiful on the inside.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 110 minutes

Genre: Comedy

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Target audience: Fans of Amy Schumer and lovers of high-concept romantic comedies.

Take the whole family?: There's a decent amount of innuendo, but even without that this wouldn't be overly interesting to kids anyway.

Theater or Netflix?: You can wait.

Does the plot make sense?: It sure doesn't. Schumer's character main aspiration is to become a receptionist. The movie jokes about it a lot, yet still finds a way for her to quickly become a VP for reasons, all the while maintaining her single-room, New York City apartment in a position where she makes less money than before. Unfortunately, the movie isn't interesting enough to gloss over these peccadillos.

Watch this instead?: I'm still a fan of Trainwreck. Schumer and Bill Hader play off each other marvelously, and the movie gets a lot of mileage from, of all people, John Cena and LeBron James.