Shallow Hal

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Shallow Hal
Shallow Hal movie poster
Directed by	Farrelly brothers
Produced by	Farrelly brothers Bradley Thomas
Written by	Farrelly brothers Sean Moynihan
Starring	Jack Black Gwyneth Paltrow Jason Alexander Joe Viterelli
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	November 2, 2001
Running time	113 minutes
Language	English
Budget	~ US$40,000,000
IMDb profile

Shallow hal is a 2001 romantic comedy film starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black and Jason Alexander. It was directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, and filmed in Charlotte, North Carolina as well as Sterling, Massachusetts and Holden, Massachusetts.

1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An ordinary man named Hal (Black) meets Tony Robbins while stuck in an elevator. Robbins hypnotizes him into seeing people's inner beauty, not their external selves. Subsequently he falls in love with Rosemary (Paltrow), an actually obese woman who appears to him to look slender and beautiful due to her kind, generous nature.

His concerned friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) is worried with Hal's new taste in women, as he believes what Robbins did to him was deceitful and wrong, and he talks to Robbins. One night, when Hal is on a date, Mauricio says the cure to Robbins' enchantment, and Hal becomes un-hypnotized. Discovering that his own sight had misled him, Hal begins to avoid Rosemary. She becomes melancholic without him around. Still distraught, Hal decides to go out on a date with his neighbor. Rosemary, suspicious of Hal's staying away, goes to the same restaurant where Hal and his friend are. making her assumptions, she calls him a psycho, and Hal is even more depressed. The day after, he meets a girl at a hospital. Previously, they to Robbins' hypnosis, he saw her as a perfect little girl, but now he sees that while she is still pretty, her face has severe burn scars. His experience with that tells him that he doesn't need hypnosis to see people's true beauty. Meanwhile, Rosemary decides to leave the country to join the Peace Corps. During his search for Rosemary to tell her the truth, he finds that Mauricio himself has his own reason for stopping Hal's hypnosis: he has a vestigial tail which has prevented him from ever getting close to a woman, and he was jealous that his friend got someone he was happy with. Hal eventually makes up with Mauricio, comes to terms with his feelings and his true love for Rosemary and picks up some of his friends. He arrives at his destination, the backyard of a luxurious mansion, where he makes up with Rosemary. He discovers she still loves him and decides to accompany her on her trip.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

Gwyneth Paltrow .... Rosemary Shanahan
Jack Black .... Hal Larson
Jason Alexander .... Mauricio Wilson
Joe Viterelli .... Steve Shanahan
Rene Kirby .... Walt
Bruce McGill .... Reverend Larson
Anthony Robbins .... Tony Robbins (as Tony Robbins)
Susan Ward .... Jill
Zen Gesner .... Ralph Owens
Brooke Burns .... Pretty/Ugly Katrina
Laura Kightlinger ... Jen
Kyle Gass ... Artie

[edit] Trivia

In an interview with The Guardian on 27 January 2006, Paltrow admitted that Shallow Hal was in the category of "shite" films that she made only for money. [1]
Black admitted that he "sold out" by starring in this film. He stated that he was eager to work with the Farrelly Brothers but the film turned out to be different than he had anticipated. "I wasn't proud of it, and I got paid a lot of money, so in retrospect it feels like a sell-out."[2]
Celebrated film critic Richard Roeper picked this as the tenth best film of 2001.
Rapper Project Pat did a spoof of this movie in his music video "Back Clap (Make Dat Thang Clap)"
Jason Alexander's character turns down a woman whose second toe is longer than her big toe. This is a reference to the Seinfeld episode "The Tape" where George inquires on his joke about the second toe becoming the leader of the toes when it's larger than the big toe.
The film was set in Charlotte, NC, a first for the Farrelly Brothers, as most of their past films were set in and around Providence, RI.
The woman with her second toe bigger than her big toe mentioned a reuniting of the Beatles, with Eric Clapton filling in for John Lennon. 27 days after this movie came out George Harrison passed away.
Features cameos by Molly Shannon, Ron Darling and Bruce McGill.