Filmbound - Episode 17: I Feel Pretty

Although I FEEL PRETTY is too sluggishly paced and not funny enough to merit a positive review, I appreciate that co-writers/co-directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein avoid one of the big pitfalls of romantic comedies, even if their film is more romantic-comedy-adjacent.  (It's primarily a self-empowerment film with a romantic comedy element.)

So many contemporary romantic comedies force relationships that I don't believe because the would-be lovers are constantly snipping at one another or contrive exaggerated conflicts to set up the inevitable climactic reconciliations.  In I FEEL PRETTY the relationship between a newly confident Renee (Amy Schumer) and Ethan (Rory Scovel) makes a lot of sense.  While the event that signals trouble for them as a couple is very much a movie mechanism--Renee's second head injury undoes the optimistic self-perception the first one gave her--it strikes a more familiar note in what can cause problems in real relationships: the internal hang-ups and self-questioning of one or both people.  It would be nice if more screenwriters see that this common, relatable quality can be as, if not more, effective than the idiot plot trope of a simple misunderstanding that regular people would easily reconcile.



In the recommendations segment I praise--and hopefully pull off a credible title pronunciation of--Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE, which is now available in a fantastic 2-disk Blu-ray set.  (It's also out on DVD and can be streamed in HD.)  At times the film evokes Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO (LE MYSTÈRE PICASSO).  The similarity is not in the technique but in access to the process involved as a work of art takes shape.  I realize that a nearly four-hour French film with significant stretches in which the camera observes an artist's strokes of charcoal or a brush as he tries to get his visions on the page or canvas is not the easiest sell, but the experience of watching it is quite absorbing.  Inspiration isn't a flash that produces something in an instant, and I was fascinated in watching Rivette try to capture what it is like to make the intangible tangible.

Why make one recommendation when I can make two?  I also give the proverbial thumbs up to Roger Ebert's Film Festival and provide an overview of the event's 20th year.  (If you want more in-depth coverage of Ebertfest, click here.)

Upcoming episodes:

-May 23: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE and a discussion about who are the biggest new movie stars of the last twenty years and what defines a star in today's Hollywood
-May 30: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR and our recommendations segment
-June 6: TULLY and a discussion about sequels, cinematic universes, and crossovers we'd like to see
-June 13: LIFE OF THE PARTY and our recommendations segment