Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) A woman struggling with insecurity wakes from a fall believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet. Her new confidence empowers her to live fearlessly, but what happens when she realizes her appearance never changed?
About: I Feel Pretty is the newest Amy Schumer vehicle. Assuming that didn’t send anyone hurling themselves off a cliff, I’ll sweeten the pot by raising you the writers of How to be Single, who have moved into the directing chair for the first time with this film. The movie comes out April 19.
Writers: Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein
Details: 113 pages
Personally, I find Hollywood’s new obsession with making 90 percent of their comedies female-driven a little weird. Are male actors incapable of being funny all of a sudden? What’s the logic on that exactly? With that said, I like my reviews to reflect the market so you guys know what’s selling. And the female-driven comedy is still a trend. So let’s take a look at this latest one.
Renee is a New Yorker who works at an off-site office for one of the biggest beauty lines in the country. Renee is obsessed with the fact that she’s not hot. And when I say obsessed, I mean she spends every waking second agonizing over the fact that every other woman is hotter than her.
One day Renee is doing Soul Cycle and while the instructor is spouting the usual nonsense about believing in yourself and being confident, Renee falls off her bike and hits her head. When she wakes up, she believes that she’s the hottest girl in the world. Her self-esteem is transformed and all of a sudden she’s super-confident.
Soon after, she gets called to the main office of her company – on 5th Avenue no less – and manages to finagle her way into the open receptionist job. It’s there that she meets Avery, the head of the company, and impresses her with her knowledge of how the “average” girl sees beauty products.
Meanwhile, she meets a guy at the dry cleaners, Ethan, easily picking him up. He’s enamored with her confidence, and for one brief moment, it looks like Renee has everything she’s ever asked for. But soon Renee starts seeing “ugly” people the way she feared beautiful people used to look at her. So naturally, this utopia she built for herself starts crumbling down.
This may be the first comedy script I’ve ever read where I didn’t smile. The only joke I spotted is the one where the writers try to convince the world that this is a comedy.
Put simply, nothing works here.
It starts with the concept. It doesn’t even make sense. A fairly attractive woman falls off a soul cycle and believes she’s gorgeous. Maybe if she started off ugly, the concept would make more sense. But the effect would’ve been minimal because the writing isn’t funny. The humor bounces back and forth between two types. The first type is Renee falling down. And the second type is when she brashly acts hot in front of people when she’s just an average girl. Neither of these options are funny when we first experience them. So you can imagine how funny they are on page 80.
In addition to this, we don’t like the main character. All she does is whine whine whine whine whine about how she’s not hot. Why would anyone like that person? One of the ways to know if your main character is likable or not is to ask yourself, if this person existed in the real world, would people like her? Who would want to hang around a woman who spends 90% of her existence complaining that she’s not hot?
Yet I understand why the mistake was made. The writers were likely saying to each other, “We HAVE to make it clear that she wants to be hot or else the movie doesn’t make sense when she all of a sudden thinks she’s hot.” Being so focused on getting one angle of your script right often blinds you to how it’s affecting other parts of the screenplay. If the writers would’ve taken a second to step back and look at this character objectively, they would’ve realized she’s unbearable.
As I’ve stated before, once your reader hates your main character, there isn’t any way to save the screenplay. You could write an Oscar-worthy plot. It doesn’t matter if we hate the person who’s in every scene of that plot.
I feel bad pouring it on but there’s nothing to celebrate here. The main character isn’t even described when she’s introduced! We don’t even get an age! The ENTIRE CONCEPT is built around how the main character looks and you don’t give her a description? Some people may say, “Well maybe they didn’t want to limit their casting options.” That doesn’t mean you can’t give SOME description. Even a “objectively average” would’ve helped.
On top of this, I don’t know how they get a single man to show up to this movie. Look, I get it. We’re putting more female-led movies out there. Women are finally getting a chance to even the playing field. But that doesn’t mean you should actively make movies that discourage men from showing up. Why would you deliberately eliminate 50% of your potential audience? The movie business is the most competitive business in the world as it is! And it’s only getting worse! Your solution is to handicap yourselves? I don’t get it, guys. I’m at a loss with this one.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you write a comedy, the one rule you HAVE to follow, no matter what, is to MAKE THE READER LOL ON THE FIRST PAGE. This is a comedy. People expect to laugh when they read a comedy. If you can make the reader laugh on that first page, you gain so much trust from them. I know that if I don’t laugh on the first page – and I didn’t here – that the script probably isn’t going to be funny.
