Shallow Hal’s Human Tail Is A Real Condition

Jason Alexander’s human tail condition in Shallow Hal is based on a real medical condition. The Farrelly brothers – consisting of Peter and Bobby – were on something of a roll during the 1990s, which began with 1994’s Dumb And Dumber. The film centered around a road trip with two dimwitted best friends, played by Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey. Great reviews and Carrey’s rising star saw it become a robust hit, and the Farrelly’s moved on to cult 1996 comedy Kingpin, starring Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray.

There’s Something About Mary is arguably their best-known comic opus – especially for the infamous “hair gel” gag – and it made stars of Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz. A recognizable formula was starting to emerge in their work, which mixed jokes that took glee in pushing the bounds of good taste, road trips and soundtracks loaded with catchy pop songs. This made up the bulk of their filmography, including Me, Myself And Irene, Stuck On You and belated sequel Dumb And Dumber To.

In a surprise change of pace, Peter Farrelly would go on to direct Oscar-winning biopic Green Book. Their 2001 comedy Shallow Hal stars Jack Black (Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle) as the title character, who will only date women he deems physically perfect. He’s later hypnotized to see only the inner beauty in everyone he meets and soon falls for Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow). While he sees her as a slender and so-called perfect blonde, in reality, she’s overweight. The message of the movie is supposed be well-meaning, with a superficial guy learning to look beyond appearances, but it still takes glee in throwing in lots of fat jokes at Rosemary’s expense too.

Black’s best friend in Shallow Hal is played by Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, whose character is also only interested in dating beautiful women. Near the end of the film, Alexander’s Mauricio reveals to Hal he has a tail, pulling down his trousers and wagging it to prove he’s telling the truth. He states it’s a genetic abnormality and his backbone is longer than it should be. This is based in truth since human embryos have a tail that is absorbed into the body as the fetus develops, but in rare cases, a small “tail” will be left.

Unlike Shallow Hal’s depiction, this is more of a tumor with no bone, so it can’t wag as it does in the movie, and they’re typically simple to remove with surgery. Singer Kesha, for example, was born with a tail that was later cut off. So while Mauricio’s tail is based on a real condition, it’s somewhat exaggerated for comic purposes.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3484 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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