Films and their influence on society

Recently, I watched a film called Pretty Ugly People directed and written by Tate Taylor. Taylor has also directed The Help (film #97/ 123 films on my favorites list)

and Winters Bone.

Pretty Ugly People I thought was a pretty strange title. I'm not sure I would have chosen it for the title. Mostly because it just doesn't quite roll off the tongue. It's not terrible but it's not great.
  Getting more to my point of reviewing this film, I am not quite sure how it might make certain people in our society feel about losing weight. The character loses weight by a gastric bipass surgery. My knowledge of this surgery is that it is not a surgery for someone who just casually wants to lose weight. You have to be morbidly obese to have this surgery. The character's name is Lucy (weird right?!). In any case she loses the weight and has another surgery to remove access skin. She has the remains of her surgery cremated and she spreads the ashes throughout the film. The plot of the film is that she convinces her old college friends to come on a hike with her up a mountain she's always wanted to climb. Convinced that their friend is in trouble the come to visit her unknowingly having been signed up for this camping trip. The trip reveals everyone's real characters and she realizes that the people she idolized all through college turned out to be very shallow people. In the end they move on to the next chapters in their lives after realizing their serious flaws and changing them to better be happy with who they are.
  The criticism I have of this film is that I wonder if people will think that if they lose weight that all their friends will be unhappy with them. Truth be told, if your friends get mad at the fact that you've done something good for yourself, then they're not your real friends. I haven't had any thoughts of losing weight since I dont really need to. However, if I were more vulnerable and over weight I might think about that possibility.  My Mother lost almost 100 pounds and never lost one friend. Maybe this is because she had good friends to begin with. Maybe that doesn't really happen in real life. I guess I'm just questioning how this would effect someone's motivation to do something good for themselves like loosing weight.

  As film makers we should try to think a little bit about our viewers and how they might feel after watching our films. I'm not sure if Taylor really thought about that or not. It was a decent movie, wasn't one of my favorites but it was alright. I'm excited to see more of Taylor's work though. I enjoyes Winter's Bone and obviously The Help is one of my favorites.

Ta Ta for now!!

-Lucy Lynne' Hall