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Film review

'Miss Congeniality 2' is no winner

Sandra Bullock fans who love romantic comedies may overlook the film's myriad problems, including an absence of believability.

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published March 24, 2005

[Photo: Warner Bros.]

Regina King, left, plays a loose cannon paired with Sandra Bullock’s character in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous.

That C grade you see for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous is an average between a D and a B, an acknowledgement that two camps will see a movie like this two different ways.

For this example, one is this reviewer, and one is my mom.

MC2 is the sequel to the 2000 hit, which starred Sandra Bullock as an FBI agent going undercover at a beauty pageant. Watching the film undergo enormous plot contrivances from its opening minutes, one realizes that the original Miss Congeniality belongs to a subgenre we'll call the one-film concept.

So what's that? Hang on, we just came up with it. Here are a few more examples: Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hrs., The Nutty Professor and even a few movies that don't star Eddie Murphy, such as Sister Act.

They're all movies in which the characters get together only because of plot machinations that simply will not recur. So the only way to follow up those flicks is to manufacture some nonsensical premise to re-create those conditions.

MC2 has no reason on earth for FBI agent Gracie Hart to go undercover again, so it reinvents itself as a buddy cop movie, pairing her with tough "loose cannon" Sam Fuller (Regina King). Now too famous to work undercover, Hart is assigned to do public relations for the Feds in Las Vegas when MC1's Miss United States and pageant director Stan Fields are kidnapped.

Benjamin Bratt didn't return for the sequel as Gracie's love interest, and also missing is any semblance of a mystery or believable characters.

FBI agents inexplicably point loaded weapons at each others' heads as a joke and beat each other up in bathrooms. And though Bullock is likable and watchable throughout, her "adorable vulnerability" shtick gets old midway through.

Still, as one character says to Gracie in the film, "My mom loves you - and she does not love easily."

Well, my mom does love easily. (Sorry, Mom, that might have come out wrong.) She loves Sandra Bullock, and she loves romantic comedies, and no doubt she and many others like her will look past MC2's enormous story, pacing and tone problems and enjoy it.

They'll crack up when Gracie mistakenly tackles Dolly Parton, double-up when Gracie and Sam go undercover at a drag queen show, laugh out loud when Gracie's fake breasts get knocked askew at the airport. MC2 is no finalist for a crown, but another congeniality award? If that's your cup of tea, sure.

Grade: C

Director: John Pasquin

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, Enrique Murciano, William Shatner, Diedrich Bader, Ernie Hudson, Heather Burns, Treat Williams

Screenplay: Marc Lawrence

Rating: PG-13; sex-related humor

Running time: 107 min.

[Last modified March 23, 2005, 10:29:06]