Phat Girlz

A plus-sized store clerk (Mo’Nique) with dreams of being a fashion designer wins a free vacation to Palm Springs, where she and her friends (Kendra C. Johnson and the whimsically named Joyful Drake) hook up with three Nigerian doctors in town for a convention. There’s nothing wrong with writer-director Nnegest Likké’s love-yourself message, but her follow-through misses by miles. The character she has written for Mo’Nique is unsympathetic—an obnoxious smartass one minute and a sniveling crybaby the next. The movie is hard on the eye (it looks like ill-lit video) and unbelievably cheap: a scene set at a five-star hotel banquet has actors eating off Styrofoam plates with plastic forks. Garbage in, garbage out. Another addition to the growing list of films whose producers were too ashamed to preview them.