WOMEN, eh? Every now and then the movie industry stirs from its great male slumber, has a good old scratch, and asks, after Freud, what women want. In the #MeToo era the inquiry is even more pressing, but judging by I Feel Pretty the jury is still well and truly out to lunch.

According to Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn’s comedy, the path to female enlightenment is paved with head injuries and psychosis. The only upside to taking this road to hell is that we get to do so in the company of Amy Schumer, who plays the central character, Renee.

Our introduction to Renee comes in a series of encounters that seem to confirm her view of herself as a big fat failure. It is here the confusion starts and does not stop. Schumer, you see, looks like a standard sized, healthy young woman. Only in the movies would she be considered fat.

Whatever, she wants to look like the other women in the Fifth Avenue cosmetics firm she works for, led by boss Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams with silly girly voice). To do so she will try anything, hence a trip to a fancy gym where she falls off an exercise bike and bangs her head.

On regaining consciousness, Renee looks in the mirror and sees her ideal self looking back: slim, beautiful and poised. Whatever the opposite of body dysmorphic disorder is, this self-dubbed ugly duckling/Cinderella has it.

Believing herself to look fabulous, Renee’s confidence soars. Next thing you know she is being promoted at work, meeting a great guy, acquiring glossy new pals after ditching her old one, and entering bikini contests. Meanwhile, all around her are aghast and amused at the fat chick who thinks she is “it”.That is the joke around which the film is built.

Hang on a mo. We are being asked to laugh at Renee, not with her, but that is okay because we know she is going to wise up sooner or later and realise that she’s just wunnerful the way she is, comfortable in her own skin, blah, blah, blah? Talk about having your low-calorie cereal bar and eating it. Just to confirm this wannabe satire on the looks industry has zero clue, who pops up in the middle of it, playing an executive at the beauty firm, but Naomi Campbell, friend to personal assistants everywhere.

Save your money for Tully ****, another movie aimed squarely at the female market. Although not perfect, and relying on a conceit of its own, this comedy-drama from Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody (Juno) has something more to offer than half-baked notions of empowerment.

Charlize Theron (Mad Max) plays Marlo, a just about managing wife and mother of two young children, one of whom has special needs. Marlo is about to have another baby. After mutterings about how she will cope, her rich brother springs for a night nanny. Tully is this godsend’s name and taking care of the baby while mum catches up on her zzzs is the game.

But Tully (Mackenzie Davis) does so much more. Believing that looking after mum is as important as caring for baby, she is soon tidying the house, making cupcakes, and generally being an all round Snow White. Slowly, Marlo begins to inch back to the capable, confident, non-sleep deprived woman she once was.

Reitman, Cody and Theron have worked together before in Young Adult, in which the latter played a hot mess of a writer coming home to lick her wounds after a divorce. Between that and Tully, the otherwise goddess-like Theron can consider these her ratty dressing gown, chip-pan hair period.

The style suits her. She is far more convincing, at any rate, than Cody’s dialogue, which tries far too hard at times to be, dread word alert, sassy.

The cast is solid, the direction assured, but it is Theron, in the end, who does the lioness’s share in making this funny, moving and memorable picture roar.