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Just as there are certain stars who make me want to see their movies, so are there certain stars who make me want to avoid their movies at all costs. Especially when one of those stars is actually the star of the film, the part they play might as well be them in real life, their name happens to be Paris Hilton, and the name of the film is The Hottie and the Nottie.

As you might guess, Paris is “the hottie,” also known by Joel Moore (Nate Cooper) as Cristabelle Abbott, the girl he fell in love with in first grade and the girl who every other woman has had to measure up to since. As Joel sees it, Cristabelle has always been the woman he is meant to be with. And so, when another one of his relationships ends in disaster, he decides that it’s about time for him to return to his childhood home and reclaim his destiny.

The problem—as Joel’s slacker friend Arno (Greg Wilson) puts it—the hotness of one girl is always directly proportional the ugliness of her best friend. Enter Cristabelle’s best friend June Phigg (Christine Lakin). Introduce the slightly taming-of-the-shrew-esque premise that Cristabelle won’t date until June has someone special in her life. And follow the fairly predictable story of Joel trying to find someone for June so he can date Cristabell, June slowly transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly, and Joel finding that in the end, June is the woman for him, not Cristabelle.

Forget that Paris Hilton is its star and ignore its title, and I have to say the story behind The Hottie and The Nottie has its positive aspects. The message at its center is classic—value, beauty, and love are all more than skin deep. It is a story that is made for us to connect with, and at various points, I did. I identified with June’s struggle of not feeling like the hottest woman in the room and knowing that to all the men around, that is all that matters. At moments, I smiled at June’s transformation and took comfort in the idea that there is a beautiful person inside us all. And at the movie’s end, I did find myself happy for where June ended up.

But even though the movie has its points of connection, inside the context of its whole, they just didn’t work for me. As much as I love a good caterpillar-to-butterfly story, the problem with June’s story is that her transformation is just too extreme. I’ll go along with a haircut, a bit of make-up, and a new dress. But when the girl at the end is barely recognizable as the one at the beginning and she probably spent her life savings on at least five different cosmetic procedures to get to that end, I have to say I found myself unsure whether the movie had actually told me that all of us are beautiful or simply that—“That’s hot. That’s not.”—and I should imitate accordingly.

On the surface, the story may be a shout out to all of us who have never even dreamed of being on a magazine cover. At the movie’s end, the regular people are the ones who have found love, and the “pretty” and “perfect” people are the ones who are alone. But as much as I would love to have left The Hottie and the Nottie feeling empowered and just as deserving as everyone else out there, the fact remains that Paris is still the movie’s star. She is still the pretty one, the perfect one, and the one whose kind heart is credited with any good that came to anyone else in the movie. Flash back to that scene in Mean Girls where Regina George tells a girl walking by how much she loves her skirt, five seconds later tells her posse how ugly that same skirt is, and as much as I would like to take the movie’s positive messages to heart, seeing them as anything more than inauthentic words thrown out into the world for the sole purpose of making one pretty girl feel even prettier is difficult for me to do.

But as even the movie itself shows, when it comes to believing in our own value, beauty, and lovability and helping others to believe in theirs, Paris is far from the only one at fault for falling a bit short. Like Joel, we too often begin the trouble by simply presenting ourselves as someone we are not. We dress in the right clothes, put on the right make-up, and do our best to look like the latest cover girl. But when we are told we are pretty, the problem becomes the “we” who has been complimented isn’t even us.

Then there’s the delivery of a compliment. And let me tell you, between ulterior motives and straight-up lies, the sad truth is that at least half the compliments out there aren’t exactly sincere. As much as they are appreciated, when affirmations come from people like mothers and best friends, as the saying goes—You have tell me I’m pretty. You’re my mother. When it comes to compliments exchanged between more distant females, I’ll be the first to admit that far too often they are nothing more than token gestures to enhance our own perfect woman persona. Then there are the compliments from men. And let’s just say, with or without a cheesy line, whether there is alcohol involved or not, when a guy’s looking down my shirt and getting way to close for comfort, it’s pretty clear that there’s only one thing on his mind and it’s not sincerity.

But as insincere as our affirmations of each other can become, thankfully they can also be very real and very sincere. We see it ever so slightly in June and Joel. And as they both show us, the only key is being real and being honest ourselves. As I see it, there is beauty and value in all of us. Each of us was created to be loved and to love others. And if we simply allow ourselves to be who we were made to be and see others for who they were made to be, I suspect we will never be at a loss to bless those around us with compliments that are nothing less than life affirming and true.