By now it’s well established that the Farrelly Brothers are the crown princes of gauche humor, a selling point for executives in need of that all too crucial teenage demographic.  But just beyond the toilet humor and jokes about deformities lies a buttery heart waiting to melt all over your lap. The best of their movies (“There’s Something About Mary”, “Kingpin”) take awhile to reveal their mushy heart, making you think they’ve gone too far before showing you they really haven’t. Their less than stellar outings—of which “Shallow Hal” is one— lay their cards on the table far too early.

The trailers led me to think that they’d tee up as many brutal fat jokes as possible and give them Tiger-sized whacks down the fareway. But most of the cruelest (read: funniest) of the fat jokes are included in the trailer; bad news for a putatively “offensive” film when the choicest bits are contained in a 90 second clip. You get a few sight gags and a few clever zingers (loved the “cankle” coinage), but they’ve gone so far out of their way to show off that they really do care about people’s feelings that any momentum created by the more vicious jokes is quickly quelled.  Redemption from the Farrelly antics comes by way of, say, the appearance of a lovably irascible paraplegic, or a trip to the children’s ward at the local hospital. You half expect Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow to stop in the middle of a scene, face the camera, and make an impassioned plea on behalf of the Make A Wish Foundation.

Am I advocating cruelty in movies? Not at all. But the Farrellys could have gotten away with a lot more than they did, and really opened up the theme of inner beauty and played around with it. They do a decent job of milking the “eye of the beholder” conceit for some light laughs, but they left a lot behind, too. The movie is far too simple minded to get subcutaneous, which is ironic since Hal must learn how not to be skin-deep. I can forgive childish jokes but not childish movies. Even in the daftest Zucker Brothers comedies there’s plenty of pointed satire. There’s none in “Shallow Hal”.

Because of the movie’s bleeding heart, Jack Black is almost completely wasted. Anyone familiar with Black’s persona on “Tenacious D” or even “High Fidelity” has to be a little disappointed by Hal’s po-faced dullness. Almost every exchange of dialogue scores a big zero; Black punches through Hal’s insipid dullness only during the all-too-infrequent scenes involving physical comedy, such as his manic spins on the dance floor. This only irritates, though, because there’s clearly more to staid Hal than you can see, but it only sneaks out when the script is looking the other way. Black would have excelled in the Jason Alexander role, since Alexander at least gets to spit out some biting lines that would better suit Black. “Shallow Hal” helps Black’s career in allowing him his first leading role, but the performance itself, for those who know how good he can be, is a let-down. Still, if it means Black gets onscreen again soon, then “Shallow Hal” is worth its weight in gold.

Paltrow is a gifted actress, and she lends the necessary gravity to her part, but the role isn’t nearly as fun as Cameron Diaz’ in “Mary”. The fat suit she wears has the waxy, glazed texture and color of a gigantic Corn Puff. They should have spent the money to hire a Stan Winston or left the whole movie in turnaround.