I Feel Pretty (2018)

“I Feel Pretty” stars Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Emily Ratajkowski, Rory Scovel, Aidy Bryant, Busy Phillips, and Tom Hopper.  Released on April 20, 2018, the film is about a woman who believes she is beautiful and confident when she woke up from a fall.

The film features the directorial debuts of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, who wrote screenplays for films such as Never Been Kissed, Valentine’s Day, The Vow, and How to Be Single.  How many times have you heard the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”?  Easy answer: a bunch of times, because it still rings true to many women as well as men.  Well, mostly women.  While there are guys who only like women based on only how they look, there are others who like them based on their traits: generous, confident, strong, caring, the list goes on.  This film takes a comedic approach to this relatable message by having Amy Schumer thinks she’s beautiful due to a head injury.  Since her major film debut in “Trainwreck” three years ago, Schumer has been struggling to find some consistency in her style of humor, with the most recent example being last year’s comedy disappointment, “Snatched”.  This year, she hopes that her latest role will help her find that comedic spark again and, more importantly, spread one of the most relatable messages on the planet to thousands of insecure women and young girls.  While the film’s life lessons speak to me loud and clear, the rest of the film didn’t have a lot of confidence to display a stronger representation of those messages.

The marketing does make the film look like a genuine female comedy like “Girls Trip”.  However, it feels more like a comedy-drama about a woman who feels inadequate compared to the other beautiful ladies in the world.  It does have some comedic moments as well as a couple of amusing scenes that made me smile, but the humor in its entirety felt more suited for a female audience, which can lead to some forced or bland situations for some people.  Despite this, the film has enough tolerable moments to earn itself a spot in the “suitable watch” category.  Amy Schumer offered another solid performance as Renee Barrett.  Even though she’s far from being the next Queen Latifah, she did fairly well in doing her own thing without always relying on physical humor every few minutes or so.  To be honest with you, having Schumer in a film like this does make a lot of sense because like her character, she’s not afraid of throwing herself out there without letting people judge her based on what she looks like.  So, she gets a thumbs up from me because of that.  Michelle Williams also did well as Avery LeClaire, Renee’s boss.  If I were to describe her performance as Avery, I would say that it was…different.  Not great, not bad, just…different.  You’ll know what I mean when you see it for yourself.  As first-time directors, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein are no strangers to films like this, especially romantic comedies, which makes them an acceptable choice in delivering a simple storyline filled with relatable messages and enjoyable characters.  I was pleased with how it turned out during the first two acts of the film, but then when it got to the final act, that’s where it completely lost me.  It’s like finding out that the creamy filling center inside the big, delicious cake didn’t taste as good as you thought it would be.  The creamy filling center was the final act of “I Feel Pretty”.  The message is still on-the-nose even though it had a cheesy and predictable ending, but the scenes leading up to them were either frustrating or just plain embarrassing.  The film also went on a bit longer than it should have mostly because of its uneven pacing during a few scenes.

Overall, “I Feel Pretty” lacks a huge confident boost despite an enjoyable performance from Amy Schumer and its tolerable execution on its real-life lessons.  It’s an improvement over Schumer’s last comedic effort, “Snatched”, but not enough to lure in people outside of her target audience.  If you still feel like seeing it because of its messages, then by all means, go on ahead and see it.  It’s not a perfect portrayal of its themes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important.  I believe a lot of women should understand that it’s what’s on the inside that matters the most, and I hope that everyone else understands that too.

C