I FEEL PRETTY

I FEEL PRETTY REVIEWED

“I Feel Pretty” is just this perfect storm of awful. Once upon a time, Amy Schumer was a decent enough comedian. She got brought into prominence working with Anthony Jeselnik and then left him in the dust. Bigger celebrities fought to be on her dead in the water Comedy Central show. Schumer had quite a killer line-up of writers helping to hone her TV and stage persona. Then, she started pushing a little too hard. It’s fine to get political when you’re a legend, but anything under utter perfection opens one up to criticism.

Drawing comparisons to “Shallow Hal” feels unfair. The Farrelly Brothers made a feature length narrative that worked as a traditional comedy. Schumer mines her previous work from Trainwreck and then sandwiches that into the world’s longest sketch. Slightly overweight lady gets a head wound and then sees herself as a beauty. Michelle Williams looks amazing, but she’s virtually playing Tilda Swinton’s character in Trainwreck.

Naturally, the Internet has been having fun with this film during its pre-release phase. What will Schumer steal from this time? How are the SJWs going to respond? So on and so forth, people traipse through the meandering conversations that pass the digital day. All the while, I’ve been wondering…what was so bad about this movie that STX dumped this movie? STX is a film production board made up of a few members of prominent Chinese hedge funds and private equity firms. In this age, if the Chinese can’t find a way to make a profit…then your film must be bad.

The loose connection to “The Enchanted Cottage” is the laziest kind of attempt to derail the movie. Schumer didn’t lift material from a forgotten secondary feature from the mid 1940s. Hell, I doubt that anyone outside of your grandparents saw that movie. But, it serves to highlight how unoriginal this story has become in our world. Do we really need to keep making people feel better about themselves? A crisis of confidence is not missing in the Western world.

When you make a film like this, you’re feeding into a world that has discovered the warm embrace of self love. Nobody is awful anymore and everybody does right as long as they accept themselves as victims. All glances are mean, all criticisms are the harshest judgments and reality is just another slap in your angelic face. The fantasy aspects of this film would’ve made way more sense in a “What Women Want” film environment. Yet, it’s something else that the modern world has killed.

Over confidence when hung on the skeleton of certain people produces complete disdain. It would be one thing if Aidy Bryant was playing the lead role, but Amy Schumer keeps shoving herself and her shaky schtick into the lead. Most non-coastal audience members will want to scream at the screen that Schumer looks like the average American woman. You’re asking us to buy into a hypocritical fantasy of a thin-skinned woman that can’t handle the world not bowing to her desire for more.

This is a nearly two hour movie about non-special people whining about why they deserve more. Between the pink haired individuals screaming about how local panhandlers have First Amendment rights and then the hordes online with their pet causes, enough is enough. Let’s just set back and do what America does best. Ignore the smaller movies and let them die on the vine until you catch them in a year on HBO.

FILM STATS

• PG-13
• 1 hr 50 mins
• STX

RELEASE DATE: 4/20/18