Brilliant and touching

A Brilliant Conflict

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

To Be Fat Like Me is one of those overly dramatic 21st century high school movies. Right into the first ten minutes it already doesn't stand up to its story and the actors chosen make it very hard to take seriously. And as with most of these movies, somehow it manages to fit its forced environmentalism propaganda in, despite it having nothing to do with the plot (these students make an anti-pollution movie that is shown briefly in the beginning). I can tell you right now from very recent experience, high school is nothing like it's shown in this movie.Anyway, the main character is named Alyson; she's a prissy, stuck-up, narcissistic ditz who thinks being pretty and good at sports will get her through life, so she's spending all her time playing softball for a sports scholarship and meanwhile looking down on her "overweight" family in shame and disgust (they're not even that fat!). She never considers that in this world you should expect the worst, not the best, and so she is totally shocked when an accident occurs that makes her unable to play sports (THE HORROR!) and she loses her scholarship. Since her grades are terrible because she never focused on anything but sports and socializing, she has to go to summer school.Alyson decides to enter a documentary contest and teams up with two closet-geek friends to start a project called "Fat Like Me", where Alyson dresses up in a fat suit and goes to school as an overweight girl, using hidden cameras to record her experiences. The problem is, she makes friends with a misfit emo-type boy named George and his best friend Ramona, an overweight girl. They have no idea that in reality Alyson is a snobby popular girl, and Alyson finds herself getting very attached to them without realizing the harm she's causing.Fat Like Me has a serious issue with its cast, mainly Alyson's family. Her mother and brother are supposedly obese but neither of them are, they're a little overweight but not the way the story goes on! The movie ends way too abruptly and never explains whether or not Alyson won the documentary contest, whether or not she fixes her relationship with Ramona and what her family thinks of the documentary once it's finished. I think the film company must have some promotional agreement with an electronics corporation or something; every kid in this movie has a computer! The kids where I'm from are mostly from blue-collar coal mining and woodworking families, they have to go to the local library for computer access. And it's highly unrealistic that the Jamie character just had "rich divorced parents to buy her high-tech spy cameras hidden in glasses and purses". The soundtrack was this trashy, horrible pop music and the lines were so fake! Nobody talks that way unless they're from Silicon Valley or something! This movie still manages to get its point across, but it is obviously written by adults with no input from kids today who are actually living the reality of being overweight in high school. Hopefully a better movie with more depth will come out someday to address the situation.

One major flaw with this interesting film. What makes fat people eat incessantly? This is never discussed in the film.Nonetheless, this is an interesting film dealing with how fat people are treated by society. They are outcasts and that is so true.Kaley Cuoco, the star lead of the film, is a look-alike for Cameron Diaz."Gentleman's Agreement" had a reporter posing as a Jew to see what it's like being Jewish. "Black Like Me" had someone passing as a black person to experience anti-black sentiment. This is the underlying idea of this film as well.The girl has an on-going dispute with her ex-heavy mother. She is angry that her mother's obesity led to illness that took money away from her possibly attending college. When she loses a sport scholarship do to an injured leg, she enters a contest to create a documentary. The subject is to be fat.Depicting personal feelings of obese people is definitely the way to go. We need much more human understanding in this area as well.

Tonight I watched the premiere of "To Be Fat Like Me" in hopes that someone had finally gotten it right. With the idea that someone had at last made a film to empower the larger women of the world, I happily set my night aside in preparation of being touched by a film that would show the world how I feel. How disappointed I was when I learned what the movie was really about. This wasn't a movie for fat women at all, contrary to the commercials that were run for weeks before the premiere of this pathetic lesson in moral fiber for skinny women the world over. I had such hopes that someone had come to the slow conclusion that we aren't fat because we can't stop eating. At least, I'm not. I'm fat for many reasons. The first being, I don't believe that skinny is pretty. The second, and most important, is that I would rather live my life as happy and wonderful and comfortable with myself as I am and die at 50 than live until 108 always fighting to be someone I'm not. Never before in this world has there been such an obsession with fat. Never have our body standards been so small that I at 230lbs (and 5'6") could not go into any store and find clothes. Five years ago, I could walk into any store I passed by and buy jeans. Now I walk into every store I pass by simply to ask them what the biggest size of jeans they carry is. And the ever ecstatic response? "Oh, don't you worry ma'am! We have very big sizes here. We go all the way up to a 14! We definitely have clothes for you!" And I say in response, "Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I'm an 18." The idea that we are so morally inculpable that we allow the magazines and television shows and retail stores to govern our size is absolutely beyond me. I am my own woman. I am big, and I am beautiful. I am not unhealthy. There is a very big difference between big and unhealthy. I have known so many skinny women in my life that were absolutely revolting in a bikini for one simple fact. They may be a size two, but they have cellulite. We think that skinny equals pretty. But, let me tell you. It's your soul, your smile, and your eyes that make you beautiful. And this movie will never ever be a good movie to me. The moral of this film is that you skinny people should understand our fat plight and not make fun of us, but try your best to sympathize and gently push us to our thin potential. Well, that's a crock. I promise you that, no matter how sweet and gentle, the first person that befriends me to attempt to save me from my food will have a very rude awakening.

This movie reminded me quite a lot about a book I own and read occasionally. The book was about a homecoming and pageant queen who was pretty, popular, and seemed to live the perfect life. That is until she got fat. In contrast, Kaley Cuoco portrays a pretty thin girl who documents life as a fat person by altering her appearance by wearing a fat suit, and not changing her true self. Life as an overweight individual opened up the true souls of her so called friends. They shunned her, harassed her, and treated her like low life scum. No one paid any attention to her personality, and the fat people at her school thought she was a walking joke. Yet, I really think that the film really makes us realize that who shouldn't judge one by looks, but the sad fact about that is true. We seem to make rude comments about to those who are physically different just because people have low self esteem and zero confidence that they take it on those who appear weaker then they. I'm more on the slender side with blond hair and bluish green eyes. However, I'm physically different that I will not post, but I had my share of experiences with the cruel comments, jokes, and harassment. However, I paid no attention to that because I lived my own life, and true people accepted for who I was, and not my appearance. We cannot help what we look like, unless you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you can make a few changes with diet and exercise. Physical deformities we can't really change, unless you go under dangerous surgeries. I think that 99% of women have image issues and they're unhappy with themselves because they think they can't do better. They fall into depression which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and cosmetic surgeries simply because of what society portrays. I believe that everyone has a "best" about them, whether it's talent, looks, or personality, and the key is to be yourself, and not what others want you to be. You'll be a total lie to yourself.