A sweet romance in a tasteless joke’s clothing, the Farrelly brothers’ latest farce follows a self-deluded skirt-chaser (Jack Black) who is hypnotized so that he sees people
for their inner beauty; hence the overweight Peace Corps volunteer he meets looks to him like Gwyneth Paltrow. If this makes you uncomfortable, it’s supposed to – Shallow Hal hilariously exposes our obsessions with surface beauty even as it dreams of a world in which appearances don’t matter.
