Rebel Wilson Show ‘Super Fun Night’ Criticized For Reliance On Fat Jokes


Rebel Wilson is overweight, and at one point that alone would have blocked her path to Hollywood.

But in recent years a group of trailblazers have smashed the stereotype that larger women cannot play lead roles — Melissa McCarthy won an Emmy for Mike & Molly and Lena Dunham has reshaped norms of portrayals of women on television with her role in Girls, for example.

This would seem to be the path ABC would take with the new Rebel Wilson project, Super Fun Night. But critics say the show it too restricted in its format and it use of Wilson.

“Unfortunately, though Wilson remains gorgeously fearless in her willingness to go all in, neither the network nor Wilson (she is an executive producer) know quite what to do with that,” wrote Los Angeles Times critic Mary McNamara. “Beyond, you know, making sure everyone realizes that we shouldn’t have such narrow preconceptions based on appearance.”

Others say the show goes too far in its fat jokes.

“Still, while the star’s skill is beyond question, the show may want to limit how often it asks us to laugh at what are, essentially, fat jokes, even when the overweight person is in control of the joke. There are only so many times you can use Kimmie being disrobed in public as a subject of humor without it crossing from comic to cruel,” says USA Today.

The show itself was met with lukewarm reviews, with a Metacritic score of 46 percent based on 26 reviews.

“Having stripped Wilson of her signature Aussie accent for no good reason, the basic story line trots her back about 10 years, to the dark ages before geeks ruled the earth and McCarthy was a franchise,” the Los Angeles Times explained.

The show, and subsequent reviews, prove that weight is still an issue, especially for female comedians like Rebel Wilson. While reviewer Rex Reed called Melissa McCarthy “tractor-sized” in a scathing review of her movie Identity Thief, larger male actors have rarely faced such scrutiny.

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