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- "Miss Congeniality"
(Reviewed December 1, 2000)
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I saw this stupid, schlocky, unfunny, overlong movie only six hours after a screening of one of the very best movies released this year, "Proof of Life." But even if I had not just seen one of only three
movies all year that I have rewarded with an "A" rating, I still would have had no use for this brain-dead junk.
It's weird. Back when the first "Speed" was released, I thought Sandra Bullock was okay. She verged on the sickening, sure, but she didn't make me run for the exits. But I have disliked her
more and more intensely with every movie she has done since then. Think of the stupid "Practical Magic," the pointless "Speed 2," the gorge-rising "Hope Floats"...aaack, I'm starting to taste my breakfast
coming up, I'd better stop.
Bullock's sickeningly saccharine "look at me, I'm a klutzy and adorable tomboy with a widdle girl's heart of gold" act has metastisized into a coldly calculated collection
of cutesy cliches. I've never been able to understand how anyone can buy her as a wholesome love-interest "America's sweetheart" type. It seems she would be better cast as conniving, ruthless, bad-girl
bitches. But maybe that's just me.
In her latest waste of celluloid, she is an FBI agent who goes undercover at a beauty pageant. The kind of "comedy" that ensues is akin to that found on the very worst TV sitcoms, the kind you flip past and
wonder, "Who the hell actually watches these shows and enjoys them? Or, worse, actually laughs during them?"
The blond who plays Miss Rhode Island (Heather Burns) is kind of cute. But one thing that is very obvious in this movie is the way that none of the other beauty-pageant contestants who appear
in scenes featuring Bullock are good looking. Almost every female who appears in the frame with Bullock seems to have been selected because she, to be delicate about it, would not overshadow the star.
The only thing that saves this bomb from being the worst beauty-pageant movie of the year is the existence of Minnie Driver's unwatchable "Beautiful." Aaaaaaaaaaack, oh, God...I knew I would
be seeing my breakfast again before I finished this review...
Back Row Grade: F
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