As the number of superhero films steadily increases it seems the number of romantic comedies decreases at the same pace.
The days of Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon dominating the box office with charming, if somewhat vapid, ‘chick flicks’ are mostly gone.
While I Feel Pretty doesn’t exactly mirror those 90s and 00s rom-coms, it borrows some of the structure and tropes.
But it owes much more to seminal 80s comedy Big.
Like in Big, the main character feels insecure and unsatisfied with their current state, and makes a wish, during a thunderstorm, to become different, ‘better’ by their own estimation.
In Big, a 12-year-old boy decides he wants to be bigger to impress an older girl and wakes up as Tom Hanks the next morning.
In I Feel Pretty, Amy Schumer (Trainwreck) wants to look like the statuesque, symmetrical models she sees in magazines and wakes up after suffering a SoulCycle-related head bump believing she is such a woman.
Schumer’s character, Renee, works for high-fashion beauty label Lily LeClaire run by Michelle Williams’ (The Greatest Showman) Avery LeClaire.
When she wakes up seeing herself as the most physically beautiful woman in the world, she chases her dream to Lily LeClaire’s head office and ingrains herself in the company.
With her newfound confidence, Renee also strikes up a romance with Ethan (Rory Scovel, The House) after a dry-cleaning meet-cute.
The greatest thing about I Feel Pretty is that Renee doesn’t actually change at all, she is just imbued with the confidence of a traditionally, physically beautiful woman.
It speaks volumes of how the right mindset, a confidence boost and a refusal to be looked down upon can change your life.
The film, while it’s pretty run-of-the-mill as far as rom-coms go, does have a fantastic message about body image and embracing your own beauty.
As far as the comedy goes, it’s alright, it’s nowhere near as crude as Schumer’s previous work and relies more on awkwardness than vulgarity.
The film also co-stars Emily Ratajkowski (Gone Girl), Busy Philipps (Cougar Town) and Tom Hopper (Game of Thrones).
