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Shallow Hal is a 2001 romantic comedy film starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Rosemary Shanahan, Jack Black as Hal Larsen and Jason Alexander as Mauricio.
Co-starring in the film are Rene Kirby, Joe Viterelli, and Brooke Burns. In addition, motivational speaker Tony Robbins has a small role as himself.
Jack Black's ex-girlfriend, Laura Kightlinger, and Tenacious D bandmate, Kyle Gass, have supporting roles, with Molly Shannon and Bruce McGill in cameo roles.
It was directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, and filmed in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Plot summary
A shallow man named Hal (Black) meets Tony Robbins while stuck in an elevator. Robbins hypnotises him into seeing people's inner beauty, not their external selves. Subsequently he falls in love with Rosemary (Paltrow), an obese woman who appears to him to look slender. His friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) is not satisfied with Hal's new taste in women, and he talks to Robbins and has Hal un-hypnotized. Discovering that his own sight had misled him, Hal begins to avoid Rosemary. She becomes melancholy and decides to leave the country to join the peace corps. During his search for Robbins to get 're-hypnotised', he finds that Mauricio himself has his own reason for being shallow: he has a vestigal tail which has prevented him from ever getting close to a woman. Hal eventually comes to terms with his feelings and his shallowness and makes up with Rosemary. He discovers he still loves her and decides to accompany her on her trip.
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 *.
At one point Hal makes a pretty random reference to knowing a kid from hawaii who tried out for the hockey team, and that it was "hilarious". This is almost certainly a reference to the movie Airborne which features Jack Black as a student at a school where a surfer kid from Hawaii shows up and tries out for the hockey team.
External links
2001 films | North Carolina films | Romantic comedy films | American films
"Shallow Hal"