Mo'Nique takes on the fast food nation

First off, I'd like to think that I'm well placed to review "Phat Girlz." I'm not a woman, and I'm not 350 lbs, so I've got plenty of separation to look at this movie objectively. I just wanted to make that clear: I'm your guy for black chick-flick comedies about weight. Now, onward.\nSo, Mo'Nique is huge. She's a very large person, and -- oh yes, this is great news -- she's decided to make a movie about it.\n"Phat Girlz" (that's girlz with a "z") opened last weekend, and it sucks. I want to dislike it completely, I really do, but I can't. I can't because it tries. Half heartedly, it tries to say something meaningful about body image in America. But it falls flat because it's not very funny, it looks horrible and it's not convincing. Mo'Nique and the self-empowerment of overweight America are hollow.\nAmateur fashion designer Jazmin Biltmore (Mo'Nique) works at a department store, which is a great location to see how thin people are assholes out to belittle the overweight. Biltmore and also-large Stacey (Kendra C. Johnson) slouch around, complaining about loneliness and dead-end jobs for about 25 minutes until the plot finally gets around to announcing that Biltmore has won the contest she entered, that was advertised on the back of a bottle of diet pills. \nThere, she and Stacey meet a couple of Nigerian doctors (male model Jimmy Jean-Louis and Godfrey), who, due to African customs, like their women large and curvaceous. Kick ass, Mo'Nique. That means you can supersize it from here on out.\nBiltmore, who spends the entire movie wanting a man, can't seem to handle having a man interested in her, so she freaks out on him, goes home early and camps out in her room full of ill-fitting clothes and diet books. I still don't know if the film is supposed to be funny. \nThe plot is irrelevant. What's really being discussed here is the way American society views the body, ignoring the fact that not all of us have the ability to look like a runway model. This is true. Some people are built with certain body structures, and there's a certain beauty to that. You shouldn't be ashamed of who you are. \nBut instead of focusing on the occasional moment when the film talks about realities like this, it instead goes over "your mama" jokes and glorifies a food fetish. You know, there are a lot of fat people in America, and not all of them can claim genetic heritage. They eat shitty fast food and never exercise. And there's no excuse for that; they made their own bed.\nThat, and it seems pretty hypocritical for Mo'Nique to be so concerned about body image, only to be attracted to a man who looks like he was carved out of marble. There are plenty of overweight and lonely men out there, but none of them are captured on camera. So, in light of its sometime-message, this movie isn't completely horrible. But it's still pretty bad.