The Plot:
Jazmin lives with her cousin Mia, a skinny little aerobics instructor who flaunts her flawless curves everywhere she goes. Being a big girl, Jazmin feels angry and depressed most of the time. People mock and ridicule her, and her equally overweight best friend Stacey is more of a co-dependent than a comfort. While she's tried every diet on the market, and strives to better herself physically, Jaz just can't make a decent dent in her size. Sadly, it hinders her from doing a lot of things she would like, including pursuing a career as a fashion designer. One day, Jaz discovers she's won a trip to a luxury spa in Palm Springs. Taking Stacey and Mia with her, she hopes they can have some fun away from the rest of the disrespectful world. Turns out, the trio gets more than they bargained for. A convention of Nigerian doctors is in town, and these men don't appreciate Mia's strong muscles and firm curves. No, they instantly gravitate toward Jazmin and Stacey, explaining that, in their country, women of their type are worshipped. It all seems to good to be true, and it just may be. But it will take a lot of soul searching and personal growth before Jazmin sees the real writing on the wall. Sometimes, the world is not the problem. Sometimes, it's you keeping yourself from being one of the fabulous Phat Girlz.

The DVD:
Phat Girlz is a film fractured by it's own intentions. It wants to be a searing, serious indictment of the current cultural obsession with body type, weight and physical beauty. It also longs to be a crazy comedic farce about a couple of overweight women looking to get their groove back. In addition, it wants to turn ladies who are big, attractive and vivacious both inside and out into the romantic heroines Hollywood tends to avoid like the plague, and it strives to say something about tradition, heritage and the differing standards of acceptance in other countries – both in Africa and the rest of the world. Now, granted, it does do all these things. It even provides a wonderful star vehicle platform for the truly capable Mo'Nique. But almost immediately after it starts, Phat Girlz starts to fall apart. It's nobody's fault, really. Writer/director Nnegest Likké, a first time filmmaker (her biggest claim to fame is as a producer on the reality ruse Blind Date) has all the proper pieces in place. Her cast is considered and well chosen, her locations and filming technique (this is a digital production) arresting and quite evocative. And yet, something seems out of place. It's as if all these divergent elements just don't want to get along. Or maybe they were never meant to be crammed together in the first place.

At the center of this story, Mo'Nique more than makes an impression. She takes some incredible chances here, allowing herself to be filmed in unflattering, sometimes shocking situations. Toward the middle of the final act, after a particularly troubling realization, she has a horrible breakdown in which she trashes her junk strewn bedroom. When it's all over, the resulting close-up is devastating. There, sans the trademark glamour she's known for, we witness the beginnings of a true movie ACTRESS. Complete with a tear-strewn face literally free of make-up, Mo'Nique allows the pain of being an object of social ridicule come pouring out. It's a tough scene to endure. Equally interesting is the finale, when she must confess her true motivation for her recent actions. Instead of putting on the fake façade that she tends to rely on most of the movie, Mo'Nique allows herself to, once again, appear human. It argues for what Phat Girlz, minus all the street slang and limp jive lingo could have been. Indeed, the rest of Likké's narrative is so driven by an outside agenda that you wonder how she allowed all the urban comedy chaos to take place.

This is part of the reason why Phat Girlz feels incomplete. The contradictory tones, constantly shifting between uproarious comedy and plus size pathos is difficult to settle into. Also, the mix of realism and fantasy doesn't gel at all. Mo'Nique is the queen of PMA – positive mental attitude – and definitely benefits, in more and more outlandish ways, from such an optimistic outlook. She becomes a major success in a very short time, giving the film a wish fulfillment focus it probably didn't need, and circumvents realities for the sake of personal cheerleading. This all makes it very hard for us to identify with Mo'Nique. While it's true that her size makes her both instantly accessible and unusual, the window into her wounded soul is only half open. Likké doesn't like to stress the mental or emotional reasons people gain weight. There is the briefest of reality checks from lover boy Dr. Tunde (something about Jazmin never being a 'size 5') and the diet obsession is downplayed as a punchline to a more serious problem. In fact, during the aforementioned breakdown, Likké has a weird montage moment where an overweight white woman has a complete personal collapse. Crying over her sorry lot in life, she's more or less rejected as a joke, the sequence going on for so long that her suicidal reaction becomes (supposedly) laughable.

The truth is, buried inside all the putdowns and "You go girl!" moments, the oddly easy love story (apparently, all overweight women have to do is find some African professionals to appreciate their 'uniqueness') and the sudden superstar success, there is a sharp and intelligent story about body issues and the female mystique dying to crawl out. In fact, just because Mo'Nique is a comedienne, doesn't mean she has to make a FUNNY film about being overweight. Sure, there can be humorous moments, but when you put forth the desire to undermine the entire waif-like supermodel mindset, when you want to take on the notion of an entire society ridiculing and devaluing a human because of the way they look, you've got to be more focused than this. Phat Girlz wants to have its agenda cake and eat it too. It tries too hard to preach to all the varying mindsets, yet never spends enough time with any of them to make their points stick. This is a lightweight fluff piece that longs to be a sharp satire and a biting commentary at the same time. Unfortunately, it never achieves any of them. While it does have its entertaining elements and sly comic moments, like most of her cinematic choices so far, Mo'Nique deserves better. Here's hoping she finds a star vehicle that can push her into the massive mainstream success she deserves.

The Video:
When Collateral came out last year, everyone thought that Michael Mann's choice of digital filmmaking was an aesthetic knockout. The look of the movie, with its immediacy and vérité flair, was hailed as the next step in motion picture cinematography. Unfortunately, Likké jumped onto this bandwagon a tad early. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen image is, frankly terrible. Interiors are passable, and look perfectly normal under controlled lighting and framing. But all the exteriors here, both night and day, are grainy, soft, blurry, muddy and occasionally out of focus. One of the things digital does is smear the edges, leaving little enhancement or detail. Truth be told, there are homemade movies by no-budget auteurs that create better looking film than this one. It could be the source material, or the poor duplication from digital to celluloid, but whatever the case, Phat Girlz looks mediocre. Likké should have insisted on the using of the original video elements for this DVD and be done with it.

The Audio:
Delivered in a somewhat pointless Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix, the occasional soul and hip hop material used as underscoring sounds excellent here. It's the dialogue, and some of the other ambient elements, that suffer under this flat, lifeless presentation. The movie sounds sloppy and unprofessional, with certain club-based conversations almost unintelligible. While not as bad as the video, the audio here is equally unimpressive.

The Extras:
Where Sony does shine, at least from a technical standpoint, is in the bonus feature department. First up is an audio commentary by writer/director Likké and it's a well meaning, overly sincere dissection of her intent. This is obviously an ongoing issue for the filmmaker, one she feels very passionately about. Unfortunately, such thoughtful consideration did not translate into an equally enlightened film. Next we are treated to a collection of outtakes/deleted scenes, with optional commentary again by Likké. She really doesn't explain much about why the sequences were edited out, except to point out that the film just felt "too long." Next, there is an elegant tribute to producer Bobby Newmyer who passed away this last year. An obvious guiding light to both Likké and the film, this montage/interview piece is a nice send off. The cast and crew also show up for a minor Making-Of (a three minute EPK) and we get a chance to see some of the backstage fun that occurred during the shoot as part of Super Size Dreams, Likké's video diary. Toss in a trailer and an occasionally hilarious blooper reel and you've got a wealth of added content. Too bad it doesn't help the film feel any more complete.

Final Thoughts:
While there are too many flaws here to offer an outright recommendation, Phat Girlz is not such a frightening flop that it deserves to be ignored. Instead, a rating of Rent It seems perfectly in tune with the movies many pluses and minuses. There will be some individuals who feel Mo'Nique and her cinematic muse created the perfect combination of comedy and criticism in service of an insightful denunciation of the entire fashion/figure brainwashing of women. Others will see it as a few jokes short of humorous, and as philosophically confused as the messages they're disparaging. Perhaps the easiest assessment to make is one that is far more personal. Mo'Nique almost manages to single-handedly save this film, using her feisty femininity and empowering bravery to overcome many of this movie's more mediocre moments. Phat Girlz could have been something really special. Instead, it's a less lame Lifetime movie with many of the genre's more scattershot symptoms.

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