Change Everything Without Changing Anything–Four Snouts Up — I Feel Pretty (therefore I am Pretty) in Theaters now

(:)(:)(:)(:)  Despite general critical distain,  I loved this movie and found it important for a couple of reasons:  1) it makes us identify, laugh and cry about (American) women’s obsession and distortion with our looks and bodies; and 2) it reminds us that the most important change we can make isn’t a diet, or an exercise regime: it’s mental.

I suppose by critical standards, this isn’t an especially good film. It has an extremely predictable formulaic arc to its plot: unsuccessful person has something happen that turns them into successful person, girl meets boy, loses boy, regains boy.  The dialogue, while funny, is not brilliant.  Had Amy Schumer written it in addition to starring in it, the dialogue might have had more oomph or edge.

Yet. Yet. Yet.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  I laughed.  I cried.  I was entertained.  I was thrilled to sit there in a theater filled almost entirely with women and see a truly average looking woman on the big screen feel gorgeous and powerful and therefore be gorgeous and powerful.

In an age where Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) can take anybody and turn them into anyone, how cool is it that when Amy Schumer wishes to be pretty NOTHING CHANGES ON THE OUTSIDE, the only change is on the INSIDE?  I spoil nothing by telling you this.  The trailers for this movie tell you the entire plot.  The opening scene tells you the entire plot.  

I don’t recall a mainstream, mass-produced, funny movie where the main plot development is that a woman goes from thinking she is ugly and fat to beautiful and pretty and the only change that has happened is in her mind.  

We’ve seen run-ups to this.  In Bridget Jones Diary we saw Renée Zellweger bulked herself up from a size 2 to a size 6 and obsessed on screen about her weight and looks.  In Shallow Hal we saw Jack Black fall in love with a hugely overweight woman only because in his mind she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow (and then eventually become willing to love her anyway in spite of her grotesque appearance).  But this is different…

I Feel Pretty nods to the movie Big where a little boy wishes on a mechanical carnival magician and wakes up the next day as Tom Hanks.  Yet the Renee Bennet (the Amy Schumer character) falls off her exercise bike, hits her head, looks in the mirror and THINKS that she has been changed physically.  But we never see a vision of Renee in the mirror that is different from how she actually is.  She always looks the same, she only feels different about herself and her entire life changes.

This movie embodies the entire philosophy I teach.  At the Centers for Spiritual Living, our founder, Ernest Holmes, said “change your thinking, change your life”–I Feel Pretty has as its tagline: “Change Everything Without Changing Anything.”  The thing is, you absolutely can.  I have done it.  You can too.