They
have been showing the movie Shallow Hal quite frequently on cable lately. I thoroughly enjoy the movie for its concept,
screenplay, and dialog. There is just
one thing that is hanging me up…
For
those of you unfamiliar with this movie, it’s about a man, Hal, who is
superficially hung up on the outside appearance of women. In all other respects, Hal is a genuinely
nice guy, caring and fun. But because looks
are the first thing he uses to judge people, he never makes it past the surface
to their inner beauty.
One
day Hal gets trapped in an elevator with Tony Robbins, the famed self-help
guru, and shares his trouble with dating.
Tony hypnotizes him, so that he no longer focuses on the outer looks,
but focuses on the inner beauty. This
transforms Hal’s world, as he starts to be attracted to women that he didn’t
look twice at before. The comedy of this
comes when everyone else around Hal can still see them for their outer looks,
and there is a disparity between the way Hal describes them and how they see
them for real.
Which
leads me to the thing that hangs me up.
Hal doesn’t see EVERYONE differently, only strangers. For example, his best friend, Mauricio; his
neighbor, Jill; and his co-workers are still portrayed and seen exactly the
same. My first thought on this was that
he was seeing them the same, because they were genuinely portraying themselves
exactly as they are. But then I took it
another level deeper and realized that the writers of the screenplay had a
fundamental dilemma to overcome.
Hal
COULDN’T see them differently, because then he’d realize something was up. So, everyone he already knew is exactly the
same, so that his brain has no awareness that he’s been hypnotized. I realize that Tony Robbins could have
layered that into the hypnosis, so that his brain wasn’t aware, but I’m not
sure it would have “taken.” The brain is
a wonderous thing, and if the “trick” is too far-fetched, then the brain will
reject it. It had to be plausible without
pushing the boundaries of what the brain would accept. I realize that I probably analyzed it way
deeper than the writers. They probably
thought about this, and then just decided that either nobody would notice, or they
wouldn’t question the fact that certain people didn’t change in Hal’s mind. Or perhaps they just thought this would add to
the comedic irony of it all.
But
it made me wonder about how I would see the people around me. Would they appear more beautiful, more ugly,
or exactly the same?
