I like Amy Schumer a lot, and I want to love ‘I Feel Pretty.’ It’s the kind of movie that I should love: with the strong female-centric kind of campy humor, anchored by a strong performance by a gal I adore. But somewhere in the middle of the film, it lost me. I stop believing in it, and the main character of Renee, played by Schumer. The conceit – Renee starts to believe that she is beautiful after she cracks her head in Soul Cycle Class – never really took off for me, and I found myself questioning it all the time. I couldn’t suspend disbelief, and I couldn’t engage.
And that is not Schumer’s fault as well. She works her ass as the character, and there are jokes that land, and it wasn’t a total loss for me because I found myself laughing out load more than a couple of times. Still, it all felt hollow to me, and maybe I really shouldn’t have been looking for depth? Michele Williams is great here, playing Avery St Claire, the Aerin Lauder to Estee, and she transforms her look with pancake makeup and talks with a Betty Boop-ish voice that should sound caricaturish but really works (I wish at times that the movie was about her)
‘I Feel Pretty’ is just ok – something to watch on a rainy Friday night when there is nothing else on. I wouldn’t trade a bowl of ice cream for it.