by Alan Yudman

After seeing I FEEL PRETTY all I could think was, “I Feel Shitty”. Yeah, it’s trite and lame but I couldn’t think of another more appropriate reaction.

Amy Schumer works on the website of an enormous cosmetics company. She sees herself as average looking, and wishes she was beautiful. She uses products, watches YouTube videos and reads magazines all to try to be more attractive. She has two average looking friends (Aidy Bryant and Busy Phillips) who commiserate in their averageness.

The MacGuffin here is that Schumer hits her head when she falls off a bike at spin class and whens he wakes up she believes she is beautiful. She’s the only one who sees it. But immediately acts like the beauty she sees in the mirror.

The problem is I saw where this was going almost immediately. That is only a good thing when the movie is executed perfectly, or in such a unique fashion that you look past that flaw. That is not the case here. I knew exactly what was going to happen and what the consequences would be. That made the time pass slowly and excruciatingly.

The message is a good one. Inner beauty is more important than physical beauty. Real friends value you for who you are not what you are. But it is a message mired in a mediocre script and blase direction.

It’s too bad. There are some funny lines and funny scenes. But they never hang together in a story. There are also great performances from Schumer, Michelle Williams as the beautiful CEO of the cosmetics company and Rory Scoville as Schumer’s love interest. The fabulous Aidy Bryant is wasted here. She is not given enough to do. See THE BIG SICK for what she can bring to a small role. Here she is merely the “ugly friend” (and ugly is a stretch).

I FEEL PRETTY could have been so much better. Instead it is pedestrian and poorly executed. I feel pretty certain this is not worth seeing again.