Miss Congeniality (2000)
Director: Donald Petrie
Had I seen this before: No
Okay. I was not going to write about this film. It's a movie that people seem to have fond memories of and there are a lot of iconic gags from it and it's not fun for me to roll in twenty years later and be like "that movie you liked a long time ago isn't good, FYI." Who cares? I like a lot of stuff from a long time ago that isn't good. But then I dropped taco sauce on a pillow while I was writing a different post and for a moment it made me feel like Agent Gracie Hart and, I dunno, I came back around to it. Because, like many flawed movies, it is sort of an interesting time capsule. It made me remember the six month stretch when everyone wore body glitter on their shoulders when they went out! And there is so much eating.
The April 25th thing is what lured me in. Year after year, the internet celebrates Miss Congeniality Day before I've even taken down my Rex Manning Day tree. And I love to be involved in stakes-free holiday celebrations! I figured that I was already aware of, conservatively, 90% of the successful jokes in the movie and it wouldn't hurt to see the bits that string them together. Unfortunately, the bits that string them together were crafted and executed in the accursed year 2000, when comedies were mean-spirited and that certain je ne sais quoi was actually just run-of-the-mill sexism.
Obviously I knew, based on the premise, that things would be a little dicey. The entire story is just Sandra Bullock being emphatically Not Like Other Girls, who are silly and superficial. And we're supposed to be on her side when she says that "harsher penalties for parole violators" is the one most important thing our society needs. The one most important thing! And I wasn't surprised at the running gay panic plot line between Benjamin Bratt and Michael Caine, although I was a little surprised at how over-the-top the reaction to one of the contestants using the word "lesbian" on stage was. It's easy to forget that being deathly afraid of the existence of gay people was just a solidly mainstream position in 2000.
But the thing that really got to me was how much certain jokes didn't make sense even accounting for movie comedy logic. To be clear, I understand this genre and the required suspension of disbelief involved in looking at Sandra Bullock and pretending she isn't obviously attractive. I don't mean that part. What I mean is, even if we accept the movie's premise that 1) being thin is beautiful and 2) many women pursue a severely restricted diet as the path to beautiful thinness, why doesn't anyone seem aware that Gracie 1) eats an arterially-concerning amount of junk food and 2) is just as thin as any other contestant there? Where are their eyeballs? They picked her for this job because she already looks conventionally "good" in a swimsuit, so clearly whatever she's been doing up to this point is working. Why are they yanking sandwiches out of her hands and giving her a celery stick? What part of Gracie's body are they proposing they remove fat from? Like, brush her hair, add some mascara, glitter up those shoulders, sure, but this insistence that she starve herself makes every character in this movie seem insane!
The film is also just generally unkind to its characters in a way that I think has fallen out of fashion in more modern comedies and it made me feel sort of bummed out the whole time. There are very talented actors selling these lines in a way that make them work--not just Sandy but Michael Caine and Candice Bergen and William Shatner, some real hall-of-famers. But if you just look at the dialogue as written, or scroll through the quotes page on IMDB, it's got a pretty unpleasant energy.
Line I repeated quietly to myself in a flawless Michael Caine: "It's all in the butt-ocks, don't I look prettyyyyy."
Is it under two hours: Yes
In conclusion: I want to reiterate that there's nothing wrong with liking this movie. I liked a lot of parts of this movie. Plus, one of my favorite Sandra Bullock movies is While You Were Sleeping, which has a deranged premise and some very questionable choices. I also recently talked up a movie that is pretty rough on its characters! I just found that coming to this one late resulted in a generally downbeat experience for me. And for the record: the April 25th bit is funny and no one here is mad at Heather Burns and I have no problem adding this observation to my personal calendar because I am a complex and nuanced thinker!
Pizza Crust from King Arthur Baking, with sausage, tomato, olives, and bell pepper
Food in this film is plentiful but also incredibly fraught. It's mostly used to cartoonishly distinguish Gracie from all the women around her--she's the hot lady who eats like a teenage boy, teehee, while the other hot ladies aren't cool enough to hide how much work it is to be hot, boooooo. So Sandra Bullock gets plenty of hammy (pun intended) eating scenes--a sloppy hamburger, some nonsense product placement from Starbucks, an entire pint of ice cream at the bar, a steak that she practically shoves in her face with her hands.
But the other women in this movie only eat once, and it is when Gracie finally breaks down their poor half-starved defenses with a hot pizza. You know the part in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion where they're making fun of Pretty Woman but then Michele suddenly gets emotional and says "I just get really happy when they finally let her shop"? That was me, with this movie. Sighing and eye-rolling but then...I just get really happy when they finally let them eat.
The dough needed more salt, but I figured this post was probably already salty enough.
Up next: Sandy's Speed co-star takes his own turn as a subculture-infiltrating FBI agent