Miss Congeniality (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Miss Congeniality is a 2000 romantic comedy directed by Donald Petrie, starring Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt.
Plot
Gracie Hart (Bullock) is an FBI agent who goes undercover in the fictional Miss United States scholarship program/beauty pageant on the lookout for a serial bomber. She is a feminist who is not traditionally attractive, and is turned into a more attractive woman going by the name of Gracie Lou Freebush, with the same tomboyish habits. She is seen overreacting to a gun-toting Texan, wearing a Tyrolean for her talent competition, much to the dismay of her mentor, the gay Victor Melling (Caine) and the director of the competition and former queen, Kathy Morningside (Bergen), and using her on-stage talent to demonstrate self-defense techniques.
In the pageant itself Hart, competing on behalf of the state of New Jersey, was tabbed to advance to the top 10, but gets through on talent alone for the rest of the pageant; she eventually places second. It is revealed at the end of the movie that Morningside and her son, Frank Tobin have plotted to sabotage the pageant; they are caught after the title crown (which is actually a bomb) detonates at conclusion of the pageant, and Gracie is awarded "Miss Congeniality" (although The Miss Congeniality award is usually given during the pageant itself, a custom in pageants such as Miss USA and Miss Universe) and starts a relationship with her partner Eric Matthews (Bratt).
Reception
The film was badly received by the critics.
Peter Travers for Rolling Stone remarked that he would "rather be buried in a mound of Floridian chad than watch director Donald Petrie force Bullock to jump through another desperately unfunny comic hoop."
