There is never a problem with Amy Schumer not being able to be funny, but there is too often a problem with the movie itself being shapeless and rambling. Schumer is a New York City gal who is instantly out of place at a spin class at the start of I Feel Pretty, and it has all those awkward moments of a Plain Jane sticking out in a room full of would-be fashion models. The next scene at home is about her body insecurity issues, and so is the next scene. Schumer’s character Renee wants a wishing genie like the one Tom Hanks gets in “Big” to ask the gods if she can be pretty. She bonks her head at the next spin class (that old sitcom-y cliché!), and coming to consciousness, she looks at the mirror and sees herself as a bombshell. Everybody else she looks at are their normal selves.
The movie juggles a number of things like a new boyfriend, the two best friends that she has that are the opposite of babe magnets because they are stuck in old maids behavior, the receptionist job at a beauty cosmetics company and the boss who takes Renee’s advice seriously, the dilemma to fend off the hotter guy who sort of comes onto her, and to evaluate the very meaning of self-confidence. And self-confidence as a theme gets a very winding, even momentarily torturous examination because “I Feel Pretty” in the last third bounces around a lot to a bunch of incongruous scenes that are rambling or just plain distracting before getting to a point.
It doesn’t have the flow of a good comedy. But Schumer always has combustible energy, as when she puts on a confident strut on her first day on the job, or participates in a wet bikini contest that sparkles of personality only because she has the only personality in the room. Such moments have a slapdash cuteness. If there was only more consistent sparkle overall! But there is indeed some intermittent sparkle supplied by Michelle Williams in a rare comedic role as a baby doll voiced cosmetics CEO. She’s like Marilyn Monroe with less jiggle and more business polish.
105 Minutes. Rated PG-13.
COMEDY / TEENS AND UP / WEEKEND SILLINESS
Film Cousins: “Big” (1988); “Shallow Hal” (2001); “Real Women Have Curves” (2002); “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006).
