Ask Calista Flockhart or Elizabeth Taylor if they find jokes about body image funny.

Both women have been the brunt of cruel jokes about their weight.

In Shallow Hal, Peter and Bobby Farrelly try to find some heart and soul, as well as laughs in living large.

It's the story of Hal Larsen (Jack Black), a particularly shallow womanizer who is taught a lesson when he falls in love with a superplus-sized woman named Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Given their track record, they're the most unlikely of filmmakers to tackle the lighter side of obesity.

Through Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Me, Myself & Irene, the Farrelly brothers have attempted to raise ridicule and rudeness to an art form.

All the trailers for Shallow Hal suggest it, too, is going to be an unapologetic gross-out, laugh fest.

There's the giant tidal wave as Rosemary jumps into a swimming pool, the collapsing furniture when she dines in fast-food restaurants and her oversized lingerie.

They're the biggest of lowbrow jokes and they're accompanied by a few equally tasteless jabs someone forgot to include in the trailer to sell the film to diehard Farrelly fans.

What the trailer doesn't indicate is the about-turn the Farrelly brothers take halfway through Shallow Hal.

The big joke is that Hal doesn't know he has fallen in love with a hefty woman.

He doesn't see Paltrow in a fat suit or her body double.

Hal gets trapped in an elevator with motivational guru Tony Robbins, who sees that Hal's shallowness is a surface ailment. In his heart, Hal is a really sweet, generous guy.

Robbins puts a spell on Hal so that he sees the soul of the person, not their exterior shell.

He sees people without their scars or deformities and meets the thin Rosemary trapped inside the ballooning one.

He falls in love with the real Rosemary and she is a wonderful person with a heart as big as her appetite.

Like Hal, the audience sees Paltrow most of the time.

It's only through the eyes of Hal's best friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander) that the oversized Rosemary appears on screen.

If it's conceivable, Mauricio is even more shallow and image-obsessed than Hal.

Shallow Hal works far better than it would ever seem possible and even delivers some genuinely touching moments.

Rosemary volunteers at a special children's ward of the city hospital. For very good reasons, it is not explained why the children are patients there.

When Hal and the audience finally discover the reason, it's heartwrenching and the scene really works.

Paltrow is in no small measure responsible for the real heart beneath Shallow Hal's crass exterior.

Even though she is rail-thin in real life, Paltrow manages to show the hurt and angst Rosemary feels from being abnormally large.

As the film progresses, Black tames his obnoxious behaviour and emerges as a man who is quite charming.

On the other hand, Alexander is essentially playing his Seinfeld character, George Costanza, on nasty pills.

He has the cruelest, most politically incorrect lines and plays them to the hilt.

The film's most powerful statement comes courtesy of Rene Kirby, who plays Walt, a self-confident millionaire who was born with spina bifida, a disfiguring condition that forces him to walk on his hands and feet.

Because Walt is not intimidated by his condition, neither are those around him.

As the film tries desperately to show, if people are comfortable in their skin and accept themselves for who they are, other people should do the same.

It's a noble sentiment and one which the film continually trumpets.

Whether the lesson will stay with viewers once they've left the theatre is the real test of the success or failure of Shallow Hal. (More on: Shallow Hal).

(This film is rated PG)

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