Movie relies on humor, lacks romance, action

Comedy achieves success by utilizing feminist stereotypes

By Sarah Szczepanski
Assistant Features Editor

"Miss Congeniality" is a good movie, but there’s nothing special about it. It is simply a comedy; there is no romance, drama or even action.

Some of the previews for the film may fool you into thinking otherwise, but don’t be surprised — it’s just a movie about what happens when a tomboy enters a beauty pageant.

FBI agent Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullock, is portrayed as a rough, tough, annoying, frizzy-haired woman who is completely at ease with the guys.

She is clumsy, sloppy, chews with her mouth open and is often featured with a disgusting stain on her shirt.

Just as Hollywood can make ugly people look pretty, it can make pretty people look ugly.

"By the way, you look like hell," is one comment made in the movie to Bullock before her miraculous transformation.

The plot is elementary.

Early in "Miss Congeniality," Bullock gets suspended because of a stunt she pulls in a FBI bust. A letter offering hints of the location of the next murder briefly introduces a serial killer. Of course, the FBI figures this out, and believes that the next victim will be at the Miss United States Beauty Pageant.

The only way to ensure the safety of the participants is to put someone undercover backstage. The FBI looks for an available female agent, and Bullock is selected.

This is, of course, because she is the only agent that looks acceptable in a two-piece bathing suit.

Bullock receives a lot of sexual harassment in her job that she does not seem to care about. This is supposed to portray that she is manly and just one of the guys.

Feminists will have a field day with this one, not to mention the entire beauty pageant thing.

To prepare for the pageant, Bullock goes though an exhaustive makeover with no less than 25 attendants and makes her grand appearance to the other pageant contestants.

The other girls are stereotypical of beauty contestants — done up, skinny, big-breasted and brainless. The rest of the movie is just a parody of what goes on in a beauty pageant.

Of course, to be fair, it does have a couple more twists.

There is a small residue of a mystery when the FBI investigates the killer, and there is even a smaller, questionable, underdeveloped quasi-plot of romantic vibes between Bullock and one of her partners.

Neither the serial-killer plot or the romance sub-plots are very interesting, nor are they strong parts of the movie.

"Miss Congeniality" seems to start to go in a new direction, and then, out of nowhere, it stops.

For example, near the beginning of the movie, Bullock jumps in her car, turns on her siren, peels off, ignores red lights and careens down the street. She ends up a coffee shop. The urgent driving rush was the result of a drink order placed by her coworkers.

This was one of many scenes that appeared to be dramatic and was not, which was characteristic of the entire movie.

When it appears that "Miss Congeniality" might be taking a turn, it double takes and returns to plain comedy.

Not to say the screenwriters don’t have comedic talent.

Writers Marc Lawrence, Katie Ford and Caryn Lucas actually use their brains to come up with a clever script that doesn’t have to rely on an excessive amount of violence or sex to be entertaining.

"Miss Congeniality" provides humor on the shallowness of stereotypical beauty pageants.

At first it seems as if the movie is making fun of the pageants. But as the slow, meaningful music begins to play in the background, and Bullock goes on a soapbox lecture of the virtues of the beauty pageants in general, its not for certain what the writers are trying to imply about pageants.

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