Kurt Loder Reviews I Feel Pretty: New at Reason

As one of the dozen or so people who liked last year’s Amy Schumer film, Snatched, I wish I could muster more enthusiasm for her new one. I Feel Pretty tells the story of a New Yorker named Renee Bennett—a Website worker for a high-end cosmetics company—who is depressed by the fact that she’s fat and unattractive. Then she falls and hits her head during a SoulCycle spin class, and when she comes to, she’s convinced that she’s beautiful. Nothing physical has changed—she looks exactly the same—but she has a sudden new self-confidence that changes everything about the way she interacts with the world.

If it need be pointed out, Schumer is hardly “unattractive,” and I don’t think she’s “fat”—although she’s obviously uncowed by the images of chic emaciation that pummel women at every cultural turn. (In a couple of scenes, she blithely invites comparison to the goddessy Emily Ratajkowski, who has a small role as a gym patron.) In the first half of the movie—before it wobbles off the rails—Schumer plays the female social plight for poignant comedy. On a dating site Renee finds nothing but rejection. In a clothes store, she finds nothing in her size and is advised by a contemptuous attendant to try shopping online. Contemplating her body in a mirror brings her almost to tears. And we hear her wondering what it must be like to be “undeniably pretty”—a melancholy turn of phrase, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.

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