“An honest-to-God fiasco. Virtually every single aspect of this rigidly unfunny comedy is botched, from the characters to the plot, the themes to the core message.”
That’s how film critic Inkoo Kang of The Wrap summed up Amy Schumer’s new movie, “I Feel Pretty.” Tell us how you really feel, Inkoo.
And the reviews get worse from there.
The new movie has a 36% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which puts it in the “rotten” category. The movie website sums up the plot this way: “In I FEEL PRETTY a woman who struggles with feelings of deep insecurity and low self-esteem, that hold her back everyday, wakes from a brutal fall in an exercise class believing she is suddenly a supermodel. With this newfound confidence she is empowered to live her life fearlessly and flawlessly, but what will happen when she realizes her appearance never changed?”
Ugh.
Odd timing for such a movie. In 2018, with the #MeToo movement empowering women, Schumer’s film seems a throwback to olden days, when a woman’s appearance was the only thing that defined her. Critic Mara Reinstein of Us Weekly writes: “The comedy rarely addresses 2018 image issues in an intelligent or self-knowing way. Instead, it sticks to the basics, such as the revelation that beautiful women have boyfriend problems too.”
“If a movie is going to put a spin on the transformation comedy, it should be more sophisticated and self-aware. All this entry does is prove the point that the genre itself is in desperate need of a makeover,” she writes.
Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter said. “The bracing promise of the setup steadily loses fizz and the overlong feature grows smaller – constricted, deflated – as it travels familiar routes.”
Of Schumer’s character, Linden says “Her newfound confidence is a healthy thing, no doubt about it. But feeling beautiful also makes her condescending, presumptuous, vain and snobby. Inevitable, if somewhat half-hearted, lessons ensue.”
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of AV Club pulls out all the stops in his review.
“Amy Schumer plays yet another shallow New Yorker with self-esteem issues in I Feel Pretty, but it seems that with each starring role, the characters become more pitiful and the life lessons more corny,” he writes.
On and on it goes. Of the 48 critics who reviewed the movie, 31 fell into the “rotten” category.
Sounds about right.