*** outta *****

3 outta 5

I Feel Pretty is a weird movie and not necessarily in a good way.  The central message about beauty coming from confidence is kind of muddled.  The lead actress gives a wild, offbeat performance but, like the movie itself, it’s a tad confused, bouncing from sympathetic to outsized to just annoying.  However, there are some laughs and a truly fantastically hilarious supporting performance.  Pretty wants to have it both ways, to make fun of body image and also to celebrate the differences, and it doesn’t quite succeed.   But it’s a hard movie to actively dislike since every few minutes something pretty funny happens. Not consistently but enough. 

Renee (Amy Schumer) is a normal gal working on the website for a glamorous cosmetics company, even though she and her co-worker, Mason (Adrian Martinez), are locked in a basement blocks away.  Renee and her fellow lovelorn friends Vivian (Aidy Bryant) and Jane (Busy Phillips) are trying to get noticed on a dating website with no luck.  Not helping Renee’s self-esteem is the beautiful model, Mallory (Emily Ratajkowski), at her spin cycle class.  Drunk and watching Big on TV one night (one of the movie’s funnier gags), Renee throws money into a fountain, wishing she could be pretty.  Nothing happens, obviously, but the next day Renee takes a header at the gym and wakes up convinced she is drop dead beautiful.  With newfound confidence she nabs a boyfriend, Ethan (Rory Scovel) and begins to assist her boss, Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams), in a new cosmetics launch.  But with Renee certain a spell has made her beautiful, it could come crashing down at any moment. 

It is funny that the movie doesn’t commit to genuine magic that made Renee think she’s beautiful or just a head injury or a complete psychotic break.   The movie never pulls the trick of seeing her new point of view like a shot of a supermodel staring back when Renee looks in a mirror.  Schumer plays it so unhinged it seems she has just completely lost her mind and the head injuries that she sustains are amusingly brutal. Schumer sells the scene where Renee looks at herself in the mirror and thinks she’s transformed into a beauty.  The problem is it’s kind of a one-note gag, Renee stomping around like a supermodel loses its appeal rather quickly but it keeps doing the joke repeatedly.  Once in awhile it does work, a bit where Renee enters a bikini contest with no bikini goes on awkwardly long enough it does become hilarious as she dumps pitchers of water on herself. 

There’re a few big speeches where Renee is supposed to be offering the point of view of the average woman but comes off as mildly condescending since it’s wrapped around trying to sell cosmetic products.  On the plus side, the chemistry between Schumer and Scovel is great; he genuinely likes her and she sometimes stops behaving like a pouty supermodel around him.  There is another twist in Renee’s point of view later on so it’s fun to watch the dynamic swap around.

One actress who is consistently hilarious is Williams as Avery, the head of the cosmetic company who is a stunning beauty yet too meek to function.  There is sympathy for Avery as she is constantly pushed aside by the no-nonsense grandmother (Lauren Hutton) and even at the top still feels small.  But mostly it’s just a chance for Williams to play such a weird character with an oddball high-pitched voice.  Even just her little mannerisms are hilarious, like when she fails at trying to wink at Renee because she seemingly doesn’t know how to wink properly.  It’s a welcome change for Williams who is a brilliant dramatic actress to see her just be funny and stupid.

Bryant and Phillips have some great one-liner reactions to Schumer being bonkers, and Martinez as Renee’s co-worker is amusingly terse, refusing to engage in Renee’s banal chit-chat.  As the model at Renee’s gym, Ratajkowski manages to be nice and she is so beautiful Renee is in awe.  It’s darkly funny how random guys fawn over Mallory and completely ignore Renee, even when Renee suffers a brutal injury a random guy asks Mallory instead of she’s okay.  In a small role as the gym attendant, Shasheer Zamata gets yuks being perky yet condescending. 

This is the first feature directorial debut of screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein and while they don’t exactly add anything in visually interesting at least it is easy to follow.   There is a lot of what feels like putting the camera down and letting the actors improvise which tends to make the movie longer than it actually should be.  It could definitely lose 20 minutes from an hour and 50 minute length. 

I Feel Pretty is a bit too simple to try to tackle the incredibly complicated issues of body image and confidence, oftentimes coming across as either preachy or just plain wrong.  What it does have is a game cast who make the experience enjoyable.   It certainly isn’t the best comedy out now, that is easily Blockers, but this has its moments.