‘Miss Congeniality’ (2000)

I am generally a fan of Sandra Bullock. Yes, there has been some super questionably terrible movies over the years, but she tends to pick interesting roles, and often different roles, removing herself from the category of typecasts. She knows what she is doing a majority of the time. One of her biggest roles of her career was “Miss Congeniality”

Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) has always been a tomboy. She has grown to be an FBI agent specializing in undercover missions. When a threat to bomb the Miss United States pageant event rolls in, the agency is forced to send in the only available female field agent, which comes to no surprise as Gracie. So off she goes, to transform from tomboy to supermodel while attempting to stop the attack on the pageant.

 The most obvious question to ask is exactly who would want to blow up a beauty pageant, and why? It is pretty clear that the answer to that question wasn’t on the filmmaker’s list of priorities. Instead, it tries to add to the hilarity, when all they needed to do is add in something simple like…a political figure is attending the event. It can have motive and still be a funny film. The other question to ask is, why in the world is there only one available female field agent? Seriously, the FBI has hundreds of agents male and female alike…there is no reason for a agency like the FBI not to have other available team members. I understand that by creating the incredible simple and unbelievable explanations to these questions they add, if only by slightly, more humor and that it was not intended to be taken seriously in the first place.

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 So will this comedy tickle your funny bone? Well as with any transformation film dealing with a character’s change in personality, while forcing them into an uncomfortable situation, there is usually some solid humor. If you are also a fan of physical humor, this film will give you quite a few chuckles. Sandra Bullocks quirky humor worked for her in this film, and I honestly couldn’t tell you an actress that could play Agent Gracie Hart better. Michael Caine had a great role as well, as did William Shatner.

 As one of the biggest movies in Sandra Bullock’s career, this did alright. It went what it was going for, but it didn’t try too terribly hard to explain the motives of the criminals in the film. The criminals were supposed to be terrorists, but come on…while it is understandable what they were going towards in regards to comedy, there has to be some kind of requirements to at least add to it being more understandable.

Also, most people know that this film had a sequel. I personally have probably seen the sequel years back, but I was way too young to remember it, or give you an idea of what it was about. So I will watch that next, but it must be different. The whole idea of this film was that circumstances forced her to go undercover at a place she didn’t want to. Can they really do the sequel the same way? I don’t know. Also, the rest of the pageants already know she is FBI, so how would that work. Only time will tell.

Peace out.