Amy Schumer shines in I Feel Pretty
Amy Schumer’s star shines a little brighter in I Feel Pretty
You’ve got to love I Feel Pretty more for what it’s trying to do than for how good a movie it is. Or in other words, judge it on its personality and not its looks. Which is very much the point. In fact, watching this movie and laughing (inconsistently but not infrequently), I couldn’t be sure if it was a romantic-comedy with a social message attached, or a public service announcement that just happened to be funny.
Either way, it’s an acting triumph for Amy Schumer, whose brief film career has featured hits (Trainwreck), misses (Snatched with Goldie Hawn), and that weird cameo where she played a war widow in Thank You for Your Service.
She regularly takes her characters to cringeworthy places, not just in broad physical terms (though there is some of that), but in the little indignities regularly suffered by anyone who isn’t possessed of A-list features; being dismissed, being judged, being ignored.
As Renee Bennett, she’s very much an average Josephine, working for cosmetics giant Lily LeClaire but far from its midtown Manhattan HQ. Instead, she toils in the online service department in a tiny basement in Chinatown, with the similarly schlubby Mason (Adrian Martinez; also a hell of an actor, by the way. Watch this man!).
Never mind that in 2018 online fulfilment probably fills a warehouse; the point is that she’s been relegated to off-site, outof-mind. But everything changes when (comedy cliché alert), a bonk on the head leaves her with the impression that she’s dropdead gorgeous.
Viewers never see what that looks like, which is a fantastic decision by co-writers and directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein. There was a similar theme at play in 2001’s Shallow Hal, when Jack Black fell for a plus-sized woman because of her
inner beauty, but that “personality” was played by a twig named Gwyneth Paltrow. What a different movie if we’d seen the real woman the whole time.
Anyway, bonked-on-the-head Renee is now brimming with confidence. She applies to be the new receptionist at Lily LeClaire — a position usually given to models who are somehow a negative dress size — and she nails the interview with her passion for the job.
She also throws herself at Ethan, a charming man she meets at the dry cleaners; his shock at her take-no-prisoners’ attitude to dating slowly changes to respect, affection and then love.
Ethan is played by Rory Scovel, a TV actor who could be Chris O’Dowd if the position weren’t already taken. There’s a wonderful, blink-and-you’llmiss-it moment when Renee has been invited to dinner with the wealthy LeClaires (Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Lauren Hutton), and Ethan carefully watches Hopper’s character for cues on when to sip his wine and how to eat his food. It’s adorable.
Part of the charm of I Feel Pretty is that Renee spends the entire movie under her delusion, and somehow never manages to hear anyone tell her that she still looks like her old self. Kohn and Silverstein thus pull off an extended misunderstanding longer than anything since the third season of Three’s Company.
The result isn’t perfect; it’s no Trainwreck (the movie), but it’s certainly no train wreck (the metaphor), either. Renee’s besties (Busy Philipps, Aidy Bryant), seem a little too on-the-nose as the best-friend characters, and while Williams is fantastic as the perfect face and baby-doll voice of LeClaire cosmetics, her brother and mother feel underwritten; we’re never quite sure what their game is.
In some ways, I Feel Pretty feels like a throwback to a certain kind of ’90s rom-com, with its unhurried pace and occasional musical montage. But the sweet message couldn’t be more current: success isn’t about becoming the pretty girl; it’s about realizing you already are. No one should need a blow to the head to figure that out.