Amy Schumer’s most recent feature, “I Feel Pretty,” puts viewers in Renee’s mindset. Renee believes that becoming beautiful will make all her dreams come true, but despite her best efforts, that standard is unattainable. After she hits her head, body dysmorphic disorder works for her, and she becomes a confident dynamo. What will happen when she realizes that she looks the same?
Movies like “Shallow Hall” (2001) and “Shrek” (2001) focus on an ordinary guy who believes that that a hot chick reciprocates his interest, but the plot twist is that she looks like his female half. He must be tricked into exploring a relationship with an ordinary woman. “I Feel Pretty” centers the ordinary woman, gives her the delusion, adds a dash of The Devil Wears Prada, and depicts her personal aesthetic in the vein of Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde.” The premise feels familiar but is subversive.
“I Feel Pretty” comes in three acts. The first act shows how Renee feels. She lives on the borders of the life that she wants and does not fit. The world feels actively hostile and often misgenders her as a man because of her size. She can’t get good customer service. She works far from her employer’s headquarters with her technical support colleague, Mason (Adrian Martinez). With her friends, Vivian (SNL’s Aidy Bryant) and Jane (Busy Philipps), she is coming up empty-handed in online dating. Schumer gets to display some dramatic chops in imbuing the pathos of a life in exile from Eden.
The second act is riveting. Renee stops seeing the world as hostile but feels as if every person’s indifferent action invites her to an idyllic life of abundance, and she accepts every invitation expecting success. Even her failures become opportunities for joy and celebration. This turnaround jeopardizes a key aspect of her personality. Because Renee misinterprets the key to her new life, she risks losing what makes her fortunate: her personality.
The third act focuses on Renee’s “Flowers for Algernon” moment. How will she behave now that she thinks that she has reverted to her original looks? She cannot return to her old life but believes that she cannot hold on to her dreams without being gorgeous. The denouement almost brings the movie to an unbearable screeching halt and never recovers its verve even as it stumbles to a happy ending. Not sticking the landing could leave even the most satisfied viewer with a sour taste in their mouth, which may explain the movie’s reception.
Enjoying “I Feel Pretty” is proportionate to your mood. If you are wearing your humorless liberal hat, you will hate it because it is superficial and enforces gender norms. If you just want to watch stunning people wear pretty clothes and have a Cinderella professional style fantasy set in America’s fashion capital, Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, this movie will entertain you. Both sides have a point but are too reductive in their assessment of the film.
If you are a feminist, then you believe that women have a choice, not that women have to make a specific set of choices; however theory differs from practice. Renee embarrassingly and wholeheartedly embraces society’s expectations for women: beauty standards, relationship goals and modest professional goals complete with a pay cut. She is not ambitious. Her professional skyrocketing happens to her. She does not strive for it. She devotes her energy to serving beauty, is deferential and is surprised to receive anything in return.
Only towards the end of second act, when Renee’s superficial values begin to affect her friends or her job performance, the film frames Renee’s actions as negative, but when Renee judges others like Mallory (Emily Ratajkowski) or Mason, the film is oblivious or plays it for laughs respectively. “I Feel Pretty” misses an opportunity to explore a possible friendship with Renee and Mallory and the Venn diagram of their insecurities. Renee minimizes attractive women to their looks even when Mallory divulges her hardships. Schumer and Martinez’s scenes are the funniest because they address each other in a more intimate and familiar way than Renee and her friends do, but the punchline rests on him being overweight, gross, and alone. Also, her boyfriend’s “feminine aspects” are played for laughs. She hates being misgendered but doing it to a guy is funny!
“I Feel Pretty” draws the line of empowering women through acceptable, gender normative ways when an ordinary woman starts to get romantic prospects out of her league. When she goes on a group date with average dudes, the scene is breezy, but when the movie’s token hot guy gets interested, the film interprets Renee as transgressive and disloyal for reciprocating. She never considers the hottest guy as a romantic prospect, and when it happens, the movie must knock some sense into her. Some concepts are too transgressive.
“I Feel Pretty” consistently develops the idea that every woman character on screen feels insecure. The film resists cynically falling into the trope that the most beautiful or wealthy women will turn on Renee when she no longer meets their needs. They are initially judgmental, cold, and preoccupied, but as they get to know her, they welcome her and never withdraw their approval. Other women value her ideas, cultivate her talent, and see beyond appearance. Interestingly Renee does not share this trait. Casting critically acclaimed Michelle Williams as Renee’s glamorous boss, Avery LeClaire, sets the tone for this thread. Williams’ physicality and vocal choices embody this thread. In one cafeteria scene, Avery approaches Renee as a beseeching attendant hugging the floor then gradually moves closer until she looms over her. Lauren Hutton as Avery LeClaire, the founder of the company, balances elegance with sensibility, and I would not have minded if the movie abruptly focused on her.
While “I Feel Pretty” wants all women to reclaim their childlike assurance, it never even casually interrogates the ease of token hot guy, Grant LeClaire, whom viewers may recognize as Tom Hopper who played Game of Thrones’ Dickon Tarly. Gram belittles Avery which amuses Grant, but Avery has a job. Why does Grant get to simply exist with no criticism? Internalized misogyny! Did the filmmakers even notice that they created this situation? Exploring it may have diverted the film from its protagonist, but he embodies Renee’s predicament without needing a wakeup call.
So how does Schumer look? There is a scene where the film captures her naked silhouette, and she looks great. In a Barbra Streisand film, eventually the regular protagonist becomes Streisand, and “I Feel Pretty” follows a similar trajectory. Then her bedmate compliments her for admiring herself in the mirror while they have sex, which has always been a visual red alarm from “Misfits” Alex to American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman. In this context, it is amusing, but the film seems unaware of the possibility of this alternate signal.
“I Feel Pretty” has many black women characters. They act as gatekeepers: to Soul Cycle, Lily LeClair, etc. Black women are attractive, cool and self-assured. While I love the compliment, Renee seems to have the same dating prospects as black women dating online. If Renee is an average American woman who feels bad about her appearance because she does not meet a beauty standard, and she shares some characteristics with black women, then where are those black women?
I enjoyed “I Feel Pretty” because I enjoyed the mindset reset though some moments induced secondhand embarrassment. The employment validation and ascension were thrilling, but I would have given up the romantic and friendship banter for Renee spending more time being an ordinary person, not putting on a show, with Mallory, Mason and gram.