Beauty is only skin deep, right? Many a comedy has been built around the idea that true beauty comes from within. Shallow Hal, that’s a good one, right? She’s All That? Awesome. Clearly, it’s an idea that is full of potential potholes to step in, and hopefully the new Amy Schumer comedy I Feel Pretty will avoid them.
Schumer has built her career destroying traditional notions of what makes a woman sexy, so I feel like she’d be good for a film like this. She plays a regular, average woman (I balk at the notion Schumer is average) who takes a severe knock on the head and wakes up with a newfound confidence, seeing herself as drop dead gorgeous.
Joining Schumer is an entire cast of not-so-average ladies including Michelle Williams, Emily Ratajkowski, Naomi Campbell, Aidy Bryant, Lauren Hutton, and Busy Phillips. Here’s the unnecessarily lengthy synopsis:
Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) knows what it feels like to be average looking in New York city – a city of the genetically and financially blessed. After falling off her bike and banging her head during a spin class, she stumbles in the locker room and it is there that she first sees what has happened – her legs are toned, her hair is silky, her chin is defined – she is GORGEOUS. Except that, to everyone else, she looks EXACTLY THE SAME.
Even though her appearance hasn’t changed AT ALL – Renee’s new belief in herself sees her climbing the ranks at the cosmetics company she works for, getting the respect of her impossibly beautiful boss AVERY LECLAIR (Michelle Williams), bagging a cute boyfriend in ETHAN and getting invited to rooftop parties.
With her new confidence comes overconfidence, and even the tendency to treat the ‘less genetically fortunate’ in the same dismissive way that people used to treat her. Eventually Renee believes the spell has been lifted – and finally realizes that when she thought she was ugly, she may have been the most beautiful, and when she believed she was beautiful, she had started to turn a bit ugly. She learns that true beauty is not skin deep.
Written and directed by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, I Feel Pretty opens June 29th.
