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Miss Congeniality...

Miss Congeniality

Movie Review: Miss Congeniality
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, William Shatner, Heather Burns.
Directed: Donald Petrie.
Written: Marc Lawrence and Katie Ford

Schlumpy FBI agent with bad posture and bad attitude infiltrates a big beauty pageant and turns into a swan. Story and direction are useless, the script is dysfunctional, but Sandra Bullock saves the day.
  

MAYBE it's the season. Maybe our immune system is misfiring. Maybe hell is freezing over. Whatever the factors, "Miss Congeniality" is adorable.
    
There's no concrete reason for anyone to come to this conclusion. The direction, by Donald ("My Favorite Martian") Petrie, is all but nonexistent.The veteran Hugh Wilson reportedly backed out of the project somewhere along the way.) The script is what you might call lumpy, with a few really smart jokes bobbing up among the mush. The story, about an ( ugly duckling FBI agent

transformed  when she infiltrates a beauty pageant-romance! self-confidence! the ability to walk in heels!-makes you wonder if chimps really are running the studios.
  
And costar Benjamin Bratt, as the inevitable colleague who sees our heroine's worth only when she puts on eyeliner and falsies, is irritatingly shallow-but, then, so was every other actor who's played the same, ever-recurring role.
   

No, "Miss Congeniality" is almost entirely about its star, Sandra Bullock, whose agent Gracie Hart attempts to redeem herself and her career by going under cover at the Miss United States beauty pageant. The pageant, which has received a threat linked to the same serial bomber who has been terrorizing the rest of the country, has plenty of other problems, including an obsessive director (Candice Bergen), a washed-up host (William Shatner, who has morphed into Merv Griffin) and a late entry (re)named Gracie Lou Freebush, Miss New Jersey and

undercover agent.
     
Bullock, who has a producer credit on the film, is not really a physical comedienne. The scenes in which the wobbly Gracie gets tutored in the pageant arts by the very queenly Vic Melling (the always reliable Michael Caine)

contain no more comic grace than the rest of the film. But when Bullock-or Caine-deliver some of the script's better lines, the result is hilarity. When Bullock goes through the waxing, plucking, tweezing and teasing of Pageantland, the good humor is contagious.
 
Bullock is just plain funny, but she gets a lot of help (and a run for her money)

from Heather Burns, who plays the ditsy, virginal Miss Rhode Island and becomes Gracie's pal during the prelude to the pageant. Yes, it's cheap to steal good lines from movies, but here's one, from Miss Rhode Island's onstage interview: "What's your definition of the perfect date?" "Oh, I guess I'd have to say April 25..." OK, maybe we're coming down with something. But charm isn't something you can really explain anyway.
 

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