While scouting sites here in Austin for next year's AICN TV show a few months back we happened upon the beginning of the MISS CONGENIALITY shoot out at the "old" Austin airport which has been converted into a city managed Motion Picture Studio. They were recreating the Atlantic City beauty pageant in one of the old hangers. Across the runway in the old Texas Air National Guard Hangers Robert Rodriguez was shooting his SPY KIDS.
A month later Harry needed to get his Head cast for his scene in John Carpenter's GHOSTS OF MARS, the makeup crew was setup out at the airport in a trailer on the runway. When we stepped out of the trailer the area was flooded with NY taxi cabs from MISS CONGENIALITY, very surreal, pieces of the pageant set were leaning against the outside of the hangers, really really weird. For months all over town Bullock and crew would pop up out of nowhere, film scenes, then disappear only to appear again the next day somewhere else.
Harry's old assistant Scout Master Sam Schott landed a walkon in a few scenes with Sandra, his Junior High computer prof got in some others. There were bizarre chases on the city's streets, and constant sightings of Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, and William Shatner at Harry's and my favorite eateries and haunts. So all that said Ol' Father Geek is pretty damn curious about this flick. Here's what one self-named dork thinks...
I know the land of AICN has been waiting with baited breath for word on the latest effort from the always diverse (sarcasm) and ever-changing (more sarcasm) Sandra Bullock. I still haven't forgiven her for Hope Floats, 28 Days and Gun Shy, but her new one MISS CONGENIALITY makes up in some small way for those.
Sandra does one thing and does it very well. She is the ultimate perky brunette. A real man's woman. The kinda girl you wanna sit in a sports bar with and share a pitcher and an order of cheese fries. She's actually a gifted comic actress with great comic intuition (see Demolition Man), and when the script and co-casting are right, the results are....well, more entertaining than Speed 2, Hope Floats, Practical Magic, Forces of Nature, 28 Days and Gun Shy all put together.
MISS CONGENIALITY is her new one (which she also produced) and it reunites her with her Demolition Man co-star Benjamin Bratt. They are FBI agents on the trail of a serial bomber/killer/mischief-maker who they discover is out to spoil the Miss Unites States pageant.
Yes, thats the Miss UNITED STATES pageant.
(I wonder if they ever actually approached the Miss USA or Miss America pageants about the film? "Oh we are doing a movie about a terrorist threat to a major American beauty pageant. You wanna help?")
Bullock's "Gracie Hart" a no-make-up-wearing tomboy is in reprimand for a botching an arrest during which another agent was shot. But Gracie turns out to be the only agent who fits the bill to go undercover as a contestant in the aforementioned pageant. Gracie and Eric (Bratt) meet with the pageant coordinator Kathy Morningside (TV's Candice Bergen, looking quite lost in a feature film) who then passes the unrefined Bullock off to pageant expert Victor Melling (Oscar-winner Michael Caine, having great fun here) so she can undergo an Eliza Doolittle transformation, which of course catches fellow agent Bratt's eye.
Its all very formulatic yes, but between Bullock's charm and Caine's entertaining one-liners, the film works in a very sugary-safe, unobjectionable, cutesy chick-flick with lotsa comedy for the guys way, and its a hell of a lot more successful in making fun of pagents than Drop Dead Gorgeous was.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
William Shatner turns up as the pageant's version of Bert Parks, and is hysterically funny at times, always smiling in the face of unexpected pageant tragedies (from Bullock leaping off the stage onto an audience member who has a gun...to the losing contestant who steps forward and announces that she is a lesbian and that she loves her girlfriend who is in the audience.)
Candice Bergen really does look lost onscreen. Her pageant director character is cold and bitter throughout, a real nasty lady. When her character turns out to be the film's villain I couldn't help but wonder why the role wasn't contrastingly nice and sweet for the first 90 minutes so that she could turn and be evil for the film's ending sequence.
The relationship between the Caine and Bullock is what really makes the film worth attention. There is a scene where Victor busts Gracie for stealing donuts. She pulls donuts out of each cup of her bra, and walks away only to have a bomb-sniffing dog go straight for the powdered donut she hid under her dress. (Was she really going to eat a donut that was stuffed into her panties? I mean, I know I would, but would SHE?)
So I give Miss Congeniality a B. Its a no-brainer. "The perfect date movie" as I am sure some no-name radio critic will be quoted as calling it in the TV commercials.
Oh and for anyone who doesnt know: When you pay to see a sneak preview, you are allowed to stay and watch the same-studio film after it? Does no one know this? Of course the free movie after in this case was Proof of Life, so I snuck into Dude, Where's My Car? instead.
Call me...
Dorky St Clair
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