I Feel Pretty * (2018, Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Adrian Martinez, Rory Scovel, Emily Ratajkowski) – Movie Review

Amy Schumer struggles as the tense and tubby, plump and pathetic Renée Bennett, completely obsessed with her appearance and weight, who has a head-banging fall in her exercise class, and ends up thinking she’s got model girl looks – for no reason at all! (Well, she has been watching Big). But, the twist is, she is exactly the same, except in her stupid head.

She thinks her two nice but plain best friends don’t recognise her any more, but of course they do, and soon she’s happy to dump them for better, more attractive people. The likeable Schumer just can’t make Renée likeable, and, what’s even worse, the funny Schumer just can’t make Renée funny either.

The lack of wit or funny one-liners (let’s not mention subtlety) in the script by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein just sinks Schumer and the movie as well. It drones effortfully on along the same one-note joke for 110 minutes. Rom-com interest briefly sparks up when Renée meets a nice ordinary bloke in line at the dry cleaners – Ethan (Rory Scovel). Somehow he finds her appealing, but then he has inner beauty too and can see hers. So that’s that joke over then.

To prolong the ‘story’ somehow, Renée decides to dump her proper backstage computerised job in a cupboard somewhere for the glamour of being a poorer paid glitzy receptionist at an up-town Fifth Avenue fashion/ perfume house, run by the simple-minded, silly, squeaky voiced Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams, showing no gift for slapstick comedy). The script turns into a sort of The Devil Wears Prada scenario at this point, though that just confirms how good The Devil Wears Prada is.

The mainly female audience in the movie theatre, obviously, were supping back their cocktails merrily in the new DeLuxe cinema seats, giggling away, while the few men in the audience were trampling over some fairly tipsy women in the audience in a stampede to get out of the cinema (joke!).

[Spoiler alert] Towards the end of the movie, Renée suddenly gets another shock (for no reason at all!) after looking in the mirror and not seeing a supermodel looking back, comes to what would be her senses if she had any in the first place, and then she just expect her friends, her possible boyfriend Ethan (who she treats appallingly) and work colleagues just to carry on loving her.

I Feel Pretty is a very bad advert for women. It keys into the idea that all they really want to be is beautiful, or, failing that, beautiful inside, or themselves. It is that tired old thing, that everybody has inner beauty and is essentially loveable if they will only be themselves. If only that were actually true! It’s as plain as a pikestaff (whatever that is, but it’s plain) that Renée is essentially unloveable. Schumer is required to do a lot of fairly demeaning comedy about her weight, and has to do a lot of fun-free falling over.

I Feel Pretty is pretty bad, wasting Tom Hopper as Avery’s brother Grant, who inexplicably finds Renée sexy, Lauren Hutton as grammy, Avery’s former supermodel grannie, Emily Ratajkowski as a low-self-esteem beauty, Naomi Campbell as fashion house Helen, and Adrian Martinez as Renée’s tubby (therefore disrespected) sole work colleague. But most of all it wastes Schumer. Walk away, Renée!

Schumer, Williams and the film-makers probably thought they were making a movie about empowerment but it seems more like a film of enslavement – to the idea of being pretty.

I waited 110 minutes for someone to sing I Feel Pretty from West Side Story – and it never happened!

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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