Trust me, it’s much more satisfying to watch and enjoy I Feel Pretty than it is to blindly hate it

At long last, we’re finally getting the superhero we deserve: Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty.
And I know what you’re already thinking, and you probably have a million questions — many of them along the lines of, “But I’ve seen that trailer and the movie did not look that great.” Trust me, I saw the trailer too, multiple times, and I thought the same thing. I went to an early screening of I Feel Pretty cautiously, and not necessarily cautiously optimistic. More like, “Is the next 110 minutes going to be a complete struggle for me?”
I’ll be completely honest and admit that I Feel Pretty is not without faults, but then again, there’s no such thing as a perfect movie and there never has been. But Schumer’s portrayal of our heroine, Renee, is pretty damn close to perfect when it comes to accepting insecurities and choosing to not only ignore them, but then eventually overcome them. And that’s why Renee is the superhero we really need this summer.
I Feel Pretty follows Renee who is — like so many others out there — struggling with her own image and self-worth. She fails SO HARD at a SoulCycle class, she’s forced to work in the basement of a makeup company (literally, in the basement, blocks and blocks away), and, on top of all that, is struggling hard actually trying to do makeup tutorials from YouTube. Hello, been there, done that.
After a freak accident gives Renee a bad bump on the head, she finds herself full of confidence she’s never had before. And this is where the trailers for the movie probably lost you, because the trailer suggests the idea that this 30-something blonde white woman, who is nowhere near overweight, looks in the mirror and finds herself ugly and at a disadvantage. The movie definitely touches on that, but that’s not what the movie is about, nor is it the crux or even the catalyst of the story. Renee’s struggle is not her weight, or her looks, or her job — all of which are fine, btw — but rather, the fact that she has almost a crippling lack of self-confidence.
But following this head bump, it’s as if she doesn’t know what it’s like to not have confidence. You’ve probably heard the joke about wanting to carry yourself with the confidence of a white man, and that’s really what Renee does. She doesn’t question her choices anymore, and she just does them. She literally manages to talk her way into a new (though, lesser at first) job and then — all thanks to her own fire and chutzpah — rises in the ranks.
It’d be easy to say that pre-head injury Renee has a severe case of imposter syndrome, but it wasn’t like she was trying to masquerade as anyone else; she had just accepted her place in the world. And post-head injury Renee doesn’t have imposter syndrome either, because she’s never even heard of the phrase. She doesn’t feel out of place, because she *knows* she belongs where she is. And in the end, literally nothing has changed about her other than the fact that she’s carrying herself in a completely different way.
Do you know how little we see this kind of makeover story? It’s not even a makeover story because, once again, nothing about Renee changed aside from her own self-perspective. She gets a new job, she gets a promotion, she gets the guy, she gets the love and support of her friends every step of the way. How is this not a movie with a hella positive message that you — and every other female on the planet, young and old— want to see?
And now, think about yourself for a second, and wonder if you changed everything about your life without literally changing anything. That’s what the movie is about. The movie is about changing your outlook on your own life by looking inward, not outward. This movie is a positive, uplifting story that could be about any one of us on the Earth — and at times, we can all see ourselves in Renee. Isn’t that what we want in a superhero?