FEEL-GOOD MOVIE WITHOUT THE FEELS

MOVIE
I Feel Pretty
Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams
Review Ray Chan

Amy Schumer's on a quest. Her TV series and movies to date have all dwelled on rejecting the ways in which women are expected to adhere to certain beauty barometers and behavioral standards in consumer society.

    And in I Feel Pretty, the theme keeps rolling on: the tale of an average-looking woman who struggles with feelings of deep insecurity and low self-esteem, until the day she thinks she has become a super model.   

    With this fresh confidence, she is empowered to live her life fearlessly and flawlessly, but what happens when she realises her appearance never changed? 

    Schumer again embraces the part of a lovable loser, a woman who tries hard to fit in but who invariably falls out: a role she's played time and again. 

    As homely Renee Bennett, she works for prestigious beauty company Lily LeClair. She can't help but notice that the head office is filled with long-legged ornaments  who look more at home on a catwalk even when strolling down the office hall. 

    When Renee suffers a knockout blow at the local gym, the concussion makes her believe she is a gorgeous beauty queen.

    Invigorated by this new-found confidence, she goes about her life believing she can achieve anything she wants, including landing a dream job and a boyfriend, unaware that it's all due to her own personality and not her superficial facade.

    And so on it goes, until Renee encounters another accident which makes her realise that her  features never really changed at all. 

    But that only inspires her to deliver a message to Lily LeClair's customers that their products are not merely for the dreamboats and stunners of the world, but also for the everyday women and “regular girls”.

    Cue message that it's what within that counts, and not without. And for this reviewer, it certainly felt as if the exposition was talking down to the audience, never a good move.

    The premise of I Feel Pretty is promising, but the message behind it is clear-cut from the start and viewers will wish it could have been conveyed with a more energetic script that delivered more laughs. Schumer is after all a comedian, but the movie hardly serves as an adequate vehicle for her talents.

    Female comedians have been self-deprecating about their attractiveness for decades, yet this movie takes that message to unnecessary extremes. 

   And as a thought to ponder: is it really politically correct to make plus-size jokes even if it the movie ends with a pandering, moralising message about body positivity? 

    I Feel Pretty is a feel-good movie about feeling good, but ironically, it lacks the feels where it matters.