As evidenced by the success of “A Minecraft Movie,” Jack Black can still draw audiences in with his brand of silly big screen comedy. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but few actors are better than he is when playing “big kid” characters, may they be good-hearted individuals like Dewey in “School of Rock” or those with rather questionable morals and values (such as real-life fraudster Jan Lewan in “The Polka King”). You could also count Hal Larson from “Shallow Hal” in the latter category, but due to the 2001 film’s arguably problematic humor and the generally unlike behavior of Hal and his best friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) for most of its runtime, one would be hard-pressed to find it in a list of Jack Black’s best movies. (Or a list of the best Farrelly Brothers movies, either.) As it turns out, the actor also wasn’t a big fan of the project.
Advertisement
In a 2006 interview, Black opened up about his experience working with directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly on “Shallow Hal,” and he admitted feeling excited to work with the siblings because he found their movies funny. But while he didn’t go into specifics, Black admitted he wasn’t happy with the fact that he got paid handsomely for what was ultimately an unsatisfying project. “I wasn’t proud of it, and I got paid a lot of money, so, in retrospect, it feels like a sell-out,” he explained (via ScreenGeek).
Black wasn’t the only Shallow Hal star who disliked working on the movie
The key premise of “Shallow Hal” isn’t too complicated — while under hypnosis, the titular character pictures women to be as beautiful outside as they are inside. As such, he sees his boss’ daughter, Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), as a slim woman despite the fact that she actually weighs around 300 pounds. In order to achieve this illusion, Paltrow had to wear a fat suit for scenes where she appeared as the real Rosemary. And much like Jack Black felt negatively about “Shallow Hal” years after the fact, Paltrow would later admit that wearing the prosthetics proved to be a miserable experience. “The first day I tried the fat suit on, I was in the Tribeca Grand and I walked through the lobby,” she explained (via The Guardian). “It was so sad. It was so disturbing. No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese. I felt humiliated.”
Advertisement
While many of the fat jokes and other bits of humor in “Shallow Hal” may have aged like milk, it can also be argued that the Farrelly Brothers’ hearts were in the right place when they were making the movie — focusing solely on one’s physical attributes is indeed a shallow and immature way to go about dating. Even Black seems to have relaxed his stance on “Shallow Hal” since that time he confessed to feeling like a sell-out for appearing in it. “It was a really funny script and a funny story, but it had a lot of emotional underpinnings too,” he said in a later interview (via YouTube). “It had some cool resonance … and I think that’s why it stuck around for all those years.”
