Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: A wonderful comedy with a wonderful story and a whole bunch of wonderful actors.
Oh, Amy Schumer is a national treasure! In “I Feel Pretty”, she plays Renee Bennett, your average American woman with your average American woman’s self-esteem issues. Having been bombarded since childhood with messages that tell her she should be thin and perfect at all times, Renee wishes that she were so. A very unfortunate and hilarious bump on the noggin later and Renee believes that she has been magically transformed into a bombshell even though she looks exactly like she always did. This gives her the confidence that she needed to do whatever she wants while also teaching us all valuable lessons about beauty and confidence and image and how even the most beautiful of women are poisoned by our absurd demands from women.
While Amy Schumer is hilarious in this movie, as she always is, if you are paying attention to her at any time when there are others in the scene you are missing the movie. Everyone around her is equally hilarious and while they definitely don’t have as many speaking lines, their facial expressions are absolutely priceless. Vivian (Aidy Briant) and Jane (Busy Phillips) are the most remarkable and have the best expressions as Renee’s best friends. Smaller, but equally emotively funny parts are played by Sasheer Zamata, Emily Ratajkowsi, Rory Scovel, and Tom Hopper. The person who absolutely steals the show is Michelle Williams as Avery LeClaire. After the movie first introduces her character, I was grinning every time she showed up on screen. Her speech, her mannerism, her movements, all absolutely golden. This is not a movie that garners awards, but Michelle Williams’ role should be up there with the best supporting comedy roles ever acted. She is such a delight!
The movie does suffer some in the comedy cliche part where Renee becomes her worst enemy, but it doesn’t last too long and gets back on the laugh track soon enough. The main message is also kind of diminished by the fact that Renee works for a makeup company and her breakthrough moment comes as she’s hawking a makeup line for average women while at the same time saying women don’t need those things, but I look at that as an ironic choice by the writers than a flaw.
The movie appears to be going through a very heavy disinformation campaign by what I can only assume are incels and misogynists so please ignore any poor ratings you may see. This is a wonderfully funny movie and I believe it will stand up to repeat viewing and still be funny.