Genre Research : Shallow Hal

For this blog the movie being researched is Shallow Hal. The story revolves around a young man named Hal. With his father dying he took on to follow his dying wish which was to only date the embodiment of female physical perfection. Throughout the beginning Hal and his friend Mauricio only focus their attention onto physically attractive females til one day Hal has an unexpected run-in with a self-help guru Tony Robbins. Intrigued by Hal's shallowness, Tony hypnotizes him into seeing the beauty that exists even in the least physically appealing  women. I think this was a great concept for a comedy because many jokes and humor can be fit into these sorts of situations. I also think this succeeds as a comedy because it is bringing attention to something that often does happen in the real world which people can relate to. I feel as though comedy serves to make people laugh it is useful in making light of serious situations.
Me and my group decided to take a look at the opening scene of the film since for our final task we will have to create a comedic one of our own. The opening scene starts out serious. It is in a hospital setting where a doctor calls over Hal's mother to advise her of her dying husbands condition. He tells her he is heavily sedated and suggests sending in Hal for a final goodbye is not a smart idea since his thinking and speech is heavily interrupted by the morphine. She pleads for her Hal to be able to say his goodbyes and the doctor complies. Then the scene cuts to the room where Hal's father, Reverend Larson, is speaking nonsense to the nurses tending to him. When the doctor enters the room with Hal and tells the nurses to give them privacy the comedic aspects start to emerge from what is initially interpreted as a sadistic and serious opening. Larson says "Tell her to come in" thinking Hal is a girl when told of Hal's presence at the door. He then starts to discuss his regrets on settling for less like when he married Hal's mother "Betty" to which then Hal corrects to be Mary. The comedic nature of the scene is emphasized when Larson starts addressing Hal in explicit and crude speech from his deathbed. As he is dying he is telling Hal to promise to settle for female perfection which in his view is a women with "a perfect can and great toddies". It is also funny because he is a Reverend and is telling Hal to take his advice because it will make him right with the lord when actually all the advice he had given Hal is the exact opposite of what he should do to be spiritually righteous. This opening scene drives the entire plot of the movie and Hal's initial behavior as a character who had decided to follow through with his dad's wishes out of respect.
The movie really takes off when Hal meets the seemingly physically beautiful women Rosemary who is actually overweight and much larger than Hal. My group and I thought the cutting back and fourth from the scene and throughout the movie showing Hal's perspective and everyone else's perspective was very clever and funny. There is a pool scene where Hal has a canon ball competition with Rosemary. He taunts her saying she won't be able to make a splash nearly as big as him. Everyone else starts to fear when she gets on the diving board because they know she will make a ginormous splash since she is actually huge. Hal however is hypnotized and sees all "ugly" women for their true inner beauty which through his eyes he sees as very physically attractive. Due to this he sees her a small and skinny women who would have a small splash. When her splash is so humongous he is very impressed that such a physically perfect women could make such a ginormous splash when everyone is startled. The scene even zooms up to a little boy who was in the pool and landed in a tree because her splash was so big. This is such a funny dynamic and we will think out adding one similar to our project. We can have one contrasting perspectives where one of the actors interprets/sees something one way and then another person can see it totally the opposite way and then they will continuously bicker since they each think the other person is insane and wrong.