I Feel Pretty film review – A mainstream triumph from Amy Schumer

US comedian and writer Schumer plays Renee, who suffers from low self-esteem because she’s neither thin as a rake nor supermodel hot.

But then she bumps her head at a spinning class and her perspective is turned upside down.

“I look Kardashian,” she trills at the mirror. “One of the Jenner ones.”

To the shock of her eye-rolling girlfriends Vivian (Aidy Bryant) and Jane (Busy Philipps), the shrinking violet is suddenly in full bloom and brimming with confidence in a body-swap movie playing exclusively in Renee’s head.

There is a very funny scene where she mistakenly thinks an unassuming chap in a dry cleaner’s (Rory Scovel) is flirting with her and she bullies him into taking her out.

To his horror she then interrupts the date by entering a bikini contest which she nearly wins by performing an embarrassing but endearing erotic dance.

Renee works for Lily LeClaire, an upmarket New York make-up firm run by helium-voiced superwaif Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams).

Her new-found confidence also makes her a big hit in the office and she escapes her basement workplace to oversee a new downmarket “diffusion line”.

The film builds up to delivering its body confidence message via a big speech in the final act. Looks aren’t important, Renee tells us. Be yourself and success and happiness will follow. It is a positive message for the young women whom this film is aggressively targeting although it is ironic that her speech is delivered at the launch a new line of cosmetics.

I Feel Pretty was written and directed by Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn (He’s Just Not That Into You, Valentine’s Day) and Schumer has a formidable talent for slapstick so it features some hilarious scenes. But her fans will miss the edginess of her TV show or her self-penned movie Trainwreck.

How hard you laugh may also depend on whether you find the spectacle of Schumer turning heads in the street or impressing CEOs in the boardroom to be funny. The film might have had more impact if the star was less photogenic. But it’s hard to imagine anyone else milking this set-up to such hilarious effect.