Shallow Hal

Shallow Hal (2001)

15 corrected entries

(14 votes)

Corrected entry: Before being healed, Hal talks to the restaurant's receptionist to claim for the broken chair where Rosemary falls to the floor. In the first part of the scene, where the receptionist is a cis woman, she is reflected in the side door as the trans receptionist.

Correction: That's the point of the movie. Although Hal sees people as "altered", the viewer sees the "real" view of the person reflected. It happened in an earlier scene where Hal and Rosemary are walking down the street together... as they crossed a window, the reflection showed the heavy REAL Rosemary while up close, we saw what Hal saw - THIN Rosemary.

Corrected entry: There's no way anyone working for the Peace Corps in a tropical third world county would be morbidly obese like Rosemary or Li Boy. First of all they wouldn't get in as physical fitness is required considering the difficult living arrangements and lack of First World amenities. Secondly, they wouldn't have access to the amount or type of food that allowed them to get so heavy in the first place. Thirdly, the heat, humidity, walking, and most likely intestinal ailments would get rid of quite a bit of that weight.

Correction: The Peace Corps does not discriminate against people based on weight and would allow anyone who wishes to volunteer to do so assuming they meet their other requirements.

As someone who, while not quite Rosemary's size, is a larger lady I have been through the medical clearance process for the Peace Corps and can confirm this is true. I am perfectly healthy with no chronic health issues and was cleared without issue. The Peace Corps requires an extensive health examination to be signed off by a qualified health professional and requires blood work to be done as well. Overall health and well-being is the concern. People of all shapes, sizes, and abilities have successfully served in the Peace Corps.

Corrected entry: The clothing that Rosemary wears throughout the movie is nothing any large woman would wear. She can't wear a bikini in public if she was embarrassed to wear lingerie in private with Hal.

Correction: I think this goes under "character decision". Since clothes are made that size some people obviously do wear them in that size. Rosie can if she wants to. When she's in lingerie she's embarassed because she's in a sexual situation which she wasn't when they were swimming.

Corrected entry: What Tony Robbins does to Hal is not supposed to be magic, but more like a form of hypnotism. Therefore, how does Hal know, at first sight, if new people he meets are beautiful or ugly 'on the inside'? Surely he should not be able to tell until he gets to know them better?

J I Cohen

Correction: Actually, this is very specifically addressed. In the dialog, the claim is that you DIDN'T need to get to know them, rather their "inner beauty" was easy to see if you looked for it. While it might have some logic problems, there is a very whimsical attempt to address it by Robbins.

Joshua Skains

Corrected entry: When the guru guy performs his magic on Hal inside the elevator he tells him that he will now see what's inside instead of judging people by their outside looks, which would mean that if a person is mean and shallow on the inside they would look very ugly on the outside, for example, his best friend would have to look extremely ugly since he is so shallow, but only the ugly people look beautiful in the movie.

Correction: Anthony Robbins tells Hal that for everyone he meets in the FUTURE he will be able to see their inner beauty.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Hal and Rosemary are walking home (where she first meets Jill), they walk past a window and you can see Rosemary's true figure in the reflection of the window. But, in the scene where Hal first introduces Rosemary to Mauricio, you can see her shadow on the floor, and it's a thin shadow of her "inner figure". There's no explanation as to why her shadow is thin but her reflection isn't.

LittleWildman

Correction: Unless her shadow is shown elsewhere to be large, or her reflection shown to be thin, this isn't really a mistake. Not knowing why it is the way it is does not make it a mistake.

Phixius

Corrected entry: In the scene where Hal enters the Children's Hospital (we know that because of the shot of the hospital sign) to find Rosemary, he asks the people at the information desk where he can find her. The first women says that Rosemary works in Pediatrics & the second women tells Hal that pediatrics is on the third floor. Actually "pediatrics" means "children" so EVERY floor in a children's hospital is pediatrics.

Correction: They say she works in pediatrics and then the woman says that she works ON the 3rd floor not that pediatrics IS the 3rd floor.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Hal shares a cab with the woman from Boston, Hal ends up giving the woman his number so she can call him. Later when they meet again, she asks Hal why he hasn't called her, but Hal doesn't have her number.

Correction: She really asked Hal "Why didn't you call me back?". Meaning that she phoned, but he didn't return her call.

Corrected entry: When Hal takes Rosemary home after the swimming incident, she is embarassed about her attire and says "I should have changed at the beach". Well they weren't at the beach, they were at a public swimming pool.

Correction: They probably did go to the beach, its just that you never see them go there.

Corrected entry: When Mauricio (in reference to his tail) says "The damn thing is wrapped around an artery - no doctor will touch it", many hairs of a crew member can be seen blowing in the wind on the lower left hand side of the screen.

Correction: That is not hair, it's Jack Black's shirt flapping in the wind.

Corrected entry: In the restaurant scene, just before Hal is "mentally rescued" or returned to his normal way of viewing women by his friend, the booth Rosemary is sitting in breaks. As she is on her back, Hal and another restaurant patron run to her rescue. At this time, Hal is still seeing Rosemary as her pretty Gwyneth self. Hal and the restaurant patron pick up Rosemary with no problem whatsoever. They pick her up as they would someone as skinny as Gwyneth Paltrow. Because of Rosemary's great weight, they should have had great difficulty in picking her up from the broken booth.

Correction: As mentioned by Tony Robbins when Mauricio asked about Hal not feeling Rosemary as being big, the same can be said by the "Hal cam" that we see. While she may have been alot more difficult for them to pick her up off the floor, Hal's perception is that she was easy and thin to pick up and that's what we see as well.

jerimiah

Corrected entry: Hal's father in the hospital bed describes the perfect woman for Hal. It can be heard that the word "can" has been dubbed over the actor saying "ass".

Correction: There is nothing wrong with this line of dialogue as it looks completely in sync - so even if "ass" was overdubbed with the word "can" it is completely unnoticeable.

Hamster

Corrected entry: When Rosie is on the diving board if you look close enough you can see the water cannons in the water. Plus Rosie jumps completely over the cannons. (00:46:05)

Correction: Those are the black lines you usually find painted on the bottom of swimming pools. You can see them in other shots which were filmed without water cannons.

Corrected entry: In the scene toward the end of the movie where the spell has worn off and Hal is on a date with the hot girl from across the hall, Rosemary and her family walk in. The mother is thin, as we've seen her throughout the movie, and Rosemary is fat. Later, at Rosemary's going-away party, we learn that the mother is overweight as well. So, shouldn't we have seen her as overweight when she was walking into the restaurant? We saw everyone else as they really were.

Correction: Mrs. Shanahan WAS obese when the family enters the restaurant. She is only thin when Hal has dinner at he Shanahan home.

Corrected entry: When Black is taken to the hospital to see the kids (and he's still seeing the inner beauty), Paltrow asks if they want to play the kissing game. There is a boy in a dressing robe who shouts "yes." along with the others, but when Paltrow asks "who wants to go first?" the boy suddenly changes his mind and says "not me".

Correction: The kids all say "me", but Black does not know about the lipstick. Paltrow explains the game, Black says "Oh, cool I wanna go first", then the kid changes his mind to "Then I wanna go last".

Shallow Hal mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Hal is confronting the two guys that made fun of Rosie he points to Rosie outside the restaurant and her shoes change from brown and black clogs (which is what she was wearing throughout the scene) to a plain black slide. Watch, it is totally obvious because they show her shoes several times before they suddenly change.

More mistakes in Shallow Hal
More quotes from Shallow Hal

Trivia: Brianna Gardner, who played Cadence the little burn victim girl, is the daughter of the movie's makeup artist Tony Gardner. She can be seen with him in the movie's closing credits.

Jeff Swanson

More trivia for Shallow Hal

Question: For years I've wondered about the scene where Hal meets Rosemary's doctor friend Dr. Sahid (in the children's hospital). Unless there's a cut or deleted scene I'm not familiar with, there's no relevance to the plot with meeting the doctor since he's never seen in the rest of the movie (therefore not knowing if his real appearance is different) - everyone else in the whole movie that Hal never met before ends up with a different appearance after the spell wears off (including men). Can anyone answer this?

Answer: I think he was in the movie to reinforce that she is a genuinely nice person and that she had a wide circle of friends who appreciated her.

More questions & answers from Shallow Hal

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.