Fat Suit Fart Attack #2: Shallow Hal

Name One Worse Thing that Happened in 2001

This image alone has made my therapist $175,000!!!

[Welcome to Fat Suit Fart Attack, a special paid-subscriber series I’m doing on fat suit movies—The Whale, Austin Powers, Nutty Professor, etc. (feel free to leave requests in the comments). I’ll be releasing them occasionally in addition to our regularly scheduled Butt Newses and Buttcasts, so upgrade to paid if you want access!

Content Warning: transphobia, ableism, racism¹, acting like fat people just walk around eating candy apples, and one of everything else.]

We’re in a 1970s Intensive Care Unit and a meaty doctor calls Molly Shannon over to chit-chat. Doc says buckle up because it won’t be much longer before her shitty husband goes to hell! She’s like WAIT, tell him not to die so fast, I don’t particularly want to talk to him myself, but I feel like I should send my fat son in to watch the light fade from his father’s eyes. So the kid comes in—Molly Shannon is GONE FROM THE MOVIE NOW, BTW²—and the dad is like, look, fatso. I’m going to croak three pieces of life advice at you:

1. “Promise that no matter what you do in life you’ll never ever settle for average.”

2. “Don’t be satisfied with routine poontang.”

3. “Don’t do what I did. I married for love, and your mother Betty—it’s been a nightmare. Find yourself a classic beauty with a perfect can and great tatties. That will put you in good stead with the lord. It’s all in here [holds up Bible³].”

The kid is like WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN but his dad interrupts him by dying and you can tell he’s dead because a fly flies into his mouth. Last words: “Hot young tail is what it’s all about. Hot… young… tail.”

Good thing this man died before he could have even MORE influence on his son, tbqh! If I was the fat son I would have murdered him just under the wire for talking about Molly Shannon like that!

Cut to the future, now Jack Black is dancing at the club, doing objectification on all the women, and the problem with me is that I AM LOVING IT. I have a conflict of interest called I love everything that Jack Black does and I have seen Tenacious D in concert more times than any real band including once by myself IN LONDON and according to my religion if I criticize him I have to go into the volcano. Holy relic:

NEEDS MORE ACCESSORIES

I tried to go into Shallow Hal with an open mind (as much as that’s possible in a series about taking dumps on movies that I hate) because I thought that would make for a more interesting piece, and because I assumed ~*my person*~ and I mean that in the Love is Blind sense would at least get a couple moments to shine, like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or the spider in Arachnophobia. Surely I would get at least one chuckle! There’s no stopping the Jack Black charisma train, baby! It’s a charisma the size of the Chrysler Building!

AND YET somehow the Farrelly Brothers manage to dim even JB’s sparkle with a script so fucking unfunny and WEIRD AND NONSENSE that I could BARELY BE OFFENDED AS A FAT PERSON because WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS WEIRD MOVIE AND WHAT IS IT TALKING ABOUT!?!?!?! Maybe you should have spent less time nonconsensually showing Cameron Diaz your penis and more time getting good at using brain, Mister Farrelly, sir!!!!!!!!!!!

Jables doesn’t get to deliver any funny lines, because there aren’t any, but a thing he does do is clearly try to pull back on his character’s abusiveness toward women, which is extremely sweet and appreciated but makes the plot of the movie even more confusing???? But I’m getting ahead of myself. We are at the club!

Hal (Jack Black) is grinding on thin women but then he accidentally grinds on his best friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander), gayly. Mauricio is NOT having luck with the ladies tonight. He tries to hit on a woman and she calls him a “little warthog” and honestly I’d like to dissect his brain to see how one recovers from that????? I could use some of that energy!

Hal and Mauricio go get a drink at the bar and Hal is like, “I didn’t expect to see you here! Where’s your new girl, Lonnie?” and Jason Alexander goes, “LINDY! HER NAME IS LINDY!”

SORRY, HER NAME IS WHOOOOOOOOOOO? How did I not remember that detail? I’ve SEEN this movie before, albeit when I was a young warthog, and MY name’s Lindy!

Mauricio says that he’s actually dumping Lindy and Hal says, “Why? Lindy’s gorgeous!” Well build me a coffin made of just that sound bite and shoot me into space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mauricio: “Her second toe is like half an inch longer than her big toe.” [Ed.: Not true! Check my Wikifeet!!! (Score: 3 stars, “ok feet.”)]