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Arts
Kirstie's Broadside
Fat Actress tries to be provocative and funny but goes wide of the mark
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
Monday, Mar. 07, 2005
Think it's impossible to play yourself and still overact the part? Kirstie Alley proves you wrong in the first seconds of Fat Actress, the Showtime sitcom (Mondays, 10 p.m. E.T.) based on her well-publicized experience as a 200-lb. actress in body-conscious Hollywood. Stepping on her bathroom scale, she reads the verdict, howls like a wounded animal and drops to the floor, then crawls to answer the phone. Her agent asks how she's doing. "Very well!" she sobs. "The pounds are just melting off!" Cheers to Alley for getting the last laugh on the tabloids. But it would be nice if there were a few more laughs for the rest of us. Fat Actress fast devolves into a one-joke Hollywood sitcom, with your usual inside jokes, sycophants and celeb cameos (John Travolta, Kid Rock, NBC president Jeff Zucker and others). It could be called Curb Your Appetite.
But unlike Larry David's self-lacerating HBO show, Fat Actress, with its cartoon conception of Hollywood, lacks any sophistication. The comedy is way broad (ba-dum-bump!) and when it hits, it's very funny, as when Alley complains about the double standard for chubby actors ("Jason Alexander looks like a freaking bowling ball!"). When it's bad--more often--it's amateurish. When she pitches a sitcom to Zucker, he answers, "Oh, I'm sure it will be huge. Enormous." This is as Cole Porter--esque as the repartee gets. Other plots hinge on black men who like big butts and Alley's getting mistaken for a pregnant woman. Did I mention she's overweight? In real life, weight bias is a genuine problem, especially for women, most of whom don't get a seven-episode deal out of the experience. Here you're being asked to sympathize with a rich, famous actress because she is slightly less rich and famous than she wants to be. That wouldn't matter much if Fat Actress were funnier, but it's simply as indulgent as a pint of Chunky Monkey. Think it's impossible to make fun of your weight on TV and still end up with a vanity project? Fat Actress proves you wrong again. --By James Poniewozik
From the Mar. 07, 2005 issue of TIME magazine
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