I Feel Prettyis ostensibly a fable of female empowerment, as an insecure woman (Amy Schumer) suddenly comes to believe she's suddenly become beautiful – only to realize, in the end, that it really and truly is what's on the inside that counts.
But I Feel Prettyfumbles its message so badly that the end result is less inspiring than just plain baffling. At its worst, it does more to reinforce society's punishing beauty standards than dismantle them.
SEE ALSO:Amy Schumer gave a brutally funny note to Jennifer Lawrence after breakupThe story begins with a catastrophic head injury. Schumer's Renee attends a SoulCycle class, where she hits her head and wakes up believing she's turned into a much prettier woman. It's not that she's come to appreciate her own body, mind you – she believes she's got an unrecognizably different body, even though she looks exactly the same to everyone around her.
Somehow, instead of insisting she seek medical help right away, everyone around Renee – the SoulCycle attendant, her friends, and, later, her coworker, after she incurs a secondhead injury that leaves blood streaming from her forehead – just lets her carry on.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bizarre choices that make up this movie. Below, five burning questions we have after watching I Feel Pretty.
Just your average SoulCycle customer, according to I Feel Pretty.Credit: STXFilmsRenee's low self-esteem is exacerbated by all the aspirational imagery out in the world: makeup brands that seem aimed at the already glamorous, clothing stores that only seem to flatter the already thin, gym classes that exclusively seem to attract the already fit.
The last of those is represented by a real brand – SoulCycle, which our protagonist attends several times over the course of the movie.
On the one hand, I Feel Prettydoes an A+ job of positioning SoulCycle as the workout of choice for stone-cold hotties. Everyone seen in those classes looks effortlessly cool and stylish – these women don't sweat, they glow.
On the other, I Feel Prettyalso makes SoulCycle look wildly dangerous. Two of Renee's SoulCycle workouts end in physical injury; the third and last time she goes there, it's specifically becauseshe thinks she might get conked on the head again. Are the SoulCycle bikes really that unstable? Are the shoes really that unreliable?
And when you inevitably hurt yourself, because apparently that's a thing that happens all the time here, do the attendants really prioritize making sure you won't sue over making sure you're okay?
The film is also very confusing about the logistics of Renee's delusion.Credit: STXFilmsOf course, Renee has no interest whatsoever in suing. She's over the moon about what she thinks is her new body. What that new body looks like, the movie never really explains.
After getting some early pushback over the trailer's fat-shaming humor, Schumer has insisted in interviews that I Feel Prettynever flat-out confirms Renee's "pretty" body is a thin one, and this is true. The character never describes herself as skinny, and we get to see what exactly she sees when she's gazing into the mirror.
Still, the context makes it hard to imagine Renee's idealized body any other way. When she first comes to in the SoulCycle locker room, she marvels that her abs now feel "like rocks." She describes her new self as "a Kardashian – one of the Jenner ones!" And throughout the film, every woman that Renee regards as attractive fits the same slender, statuesque standard.
In truth, it makes perfect sense that Renee's dream body would be a svelte one. The character herself has some very specific ideas about what it means to be "undeniably beautiful" (Emily Ratajkowski, basically); it seems only natural that her delusion would fit that same mold.
A sharper film could've used this as an opportunity to challenge Renee's assumptions and prejudices. Instead, the fact that I Feel Pretty's own star can't make a convincing case for how her character sees herself speaks to some serious disconnect between the film's intentions and its execution.
Give Michelle Williams more comedies, please.Credit: STXfilmsFor all of I Feel Pretty's shortcomings, though, it does offer one thing that not nearly enough movies do: An actually meaty role for Michelle Williams. Not only that, but an actually meaty role that doesn't involve her playing some troubled male protagonist's sad wife. (We love you, The Greatest Showmanand Manchester by the Sea, but you know what you did.)
Williams gets the first real belly laugh of the movie, about 20 minutes in, when we're introduced to her breathy, high-pitched voice first and her face second. She turns out to be playing Avery LeClarie, the ambitious but perpetually underestimated scion of the luxury makeup brand that Renee works for.
The humor in that scene comes from the shock – here's Williams as we've rarely seen her before – but the rest of the film proves that was no fluke. Williams makes Avery so specifically weird, with her fluttery mannerisms and "sexy baby" voice, that she elevates the movie every time she walks onscreen.
I Feel Prettyis not, by and large, a funny movie. Its pacing is leaden (it vastly overestimates the entertainment value of watching Schumer stumble over her words), its dialogue is stilted (when Schumer does get her words out, she often speaks in first-draft diatribes), its characters are underwritten, and it sometimes seems as though the film can't make up its mind about what we're supposed to be laughing at, or why.
But Williams is very, very funny in it. She outshines most of the actual comedians in the movie, including Schumer herself. If there's any reason at all to watch I Feel Pretty, it's for Williams, who's good enough to make me wish she'd ditch the prestige dramas for a bit and try out some more loosey-goosey comedies.
Don't get too attached to this guy – his subplot goes nowhere.Credit: STXfilmsWilliams' Avery isn't the only LeClaire in the biz, though. She's got a shrewd grandmother, Lily, played by Lauren Hutton, and a roguish brother, Grant, played by Tom Hopper (a.k.a. Dickon Tarly from Game of Thrones).
What the film is doing with these two people is never really clear. Grant is introduced early on as a scheming charmer who loves supermodels and green juice and maybe has designs on Avery's position or Renee herself. Then he just kinda disappears halfway through the movie, resurfacing only at the end to remind you he still exists.
Which is emblematic of a lot of I Feel Pretty, actually. For a film so insistent on reminding us that average-looking women are people, too, it has a remarkably difficult time with the notion that anyone else around Renee really matters. Every character exists only to serve Renee's arc, and their storylines are unceremoniously dropped once they stop being about her.
This isn't always a bad thing. She ismain character, after all, and I Feel Prettydoesn't have the time to delve deep into the inner lives of every single person who passes through the frame. But the film handles its supporting players so carelessly that it undermines whatever empathy it was trying to build.
Ethan (Rory Scovel), Renee's boyfriend, gets subjected to jabs about his "femininity" (he does Zumba), but his insecurities aren't resolved like hers are. Mason (Adrian Martinez), Renee's coworker, gets treated like dirt, but still drops everything to help her for no reason at all. When Jane (Busy Phillipps) and Vivian (Aidy Bryant) describe the old Renee as "kind" and "fun," it's actually confusing, because we've seen neither of those qualities in her.
If only this film were as sweet and pleasant as this photo.Credit: STXfilmsI Feel Prettyis not exactly subtle about the message it wants to send; it's explicitly spelled out in a third-act monologue delivered by Renee. It's just really bad at delivering it.
This is a movie that wants you to believe in yourself, but plays Renee's newfound self-esteem for laughs. We're meant to laugh at her deluded self-image – thisgirl, with thisbody, entering a bikini contest? LOL! – while simultaneously cheering on her confidence.
It means to explain that everyone has insecurities, even gorgeous women, but does so by having Renee express shock at the idea that a gorgeous acquaintance (played by Ratajkowski) could possibly ever be sad about anything – and then treating that epiphany like a radical act of empathy on Renee's part, rather than the kind of no-duh realization that most people reach by fifth grade.
I Feel Pretty is like a feature-length Dove ad, only somehow even more condescending and consumerist.
It wants to point out how exclusionary beauty standards can be, but picks as its avatar a blond white woman of average height and weight, while sidelining women who fall even farther outside the conventional ideal.
There are women of color in I Feel Pretty, but because they're skinnier than she is, the film is blind to any of the prejudices and injustices that they might be facing. There are fatter and older women than Renee, but the film isn't interested in exploring how Renee has privileges they don't.
There are classist connotations in the film's idea of beauty, too. Renee is assumed to be more in touch with the lower-end customers targeted by Lily LeClaire's new diffusion line, in contrast to the rest of her colleagues, who are uniformly painted as willowy, wealthy, and out-of-touch.
Renee hard at work.Credit: STXfilmsIt's Renee who gets to explain to her bosses and the world at large that makeup should be for everyone. Yes, even though, as an able-bodied woman with pale pink skin and an only-in-romcoms level of disposable income, she's likelier than anyone to find the shades and tools she needs at any price point, at any cosmetics counter.
For that matter, this film can't think of any better delivery vehicle for this message, in the movie, than a marketing event for a global beauty brand. I Feel Prettyis like a feature-length Dove ad, only somehow even more condescending and consumerist.
Instead of questioning why it matters that our standards of beauty are so limited, I Feel Prettytries to argue that it actually doesn'tmatter as long as you believe in yourself. Instead of considering how beauty can be empowering (who among us doesn't walk a little taller when we're having a good hair day?), it only sees how beauty can be oppressive.
In the end, I Feel Prettydoes nothing to expand our ideas about what beauty can look like, or who gets to wield it, or who gets to decide who gets to wield it. Pretty remains the province of the young, slender, and high-cheekboned. The rest of us, it seems, will have to settle for that old familiar "inner beauty" consolation prize.
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