MISS CONGENIALITY
by Lovell Mahan-Moutaw
Don't Hide Your Light Under a Bushel?
You Don't Have to Be Unfeminine to Be a Feminist?
Don't Make Assumptions About Beautiful Women, They May Just Be Doing The Best They Can?
Feminists Shouldn't Take Themselves So Seriously?
Any of these could be the moral of Miss Congeniality, a film starring Sandra Bullock.

Or there may not be a moral to the story. It may just be a story meant to be funny and entertaining. I find that Sandra Bullock speaks to me with her work so I cannot believe that she would act in a film (even produce one, as is the case here) that didn't have something to say.

Miss Congeniality is the story of a young woman named Gracie who stands up for herself and others. She did this as a young girl and found that most people don't like strong girls and think that any girl who could physically protect herself (and others) is "weird."

Gracie grows up in her own world. She lives alone, has no boyfriend, has no girlfriends, wears comfortable men's clothes, eats Hungry Man frozen dinners, has no table manners, doesn't wear makeup, doesn't brush her hair, dates very infrequently, and lives for her job.

She still likes to stand up for herself and what is right, and thus has joined the FBI. Nevertheless, what is "right" and what are "orders" are two different things. Gracie often finds herself in trouble when she does what she thinks is right rather than following orders. Either because she is often screwing up or because she is a woman, Gracie is subject to such important maneuvers at the FBI as buying all the lattes, mochas, machiatos, etc. at the local Starbucks for her fellow agents before the morning meeting.

Gracie's best friend is the gorgeous, well-dressed, flirtatious Eric (Benjamin Bratt), another agent at the FBI. He treats Gracie like one of the boys, shoving her on the shoulder, patting her on the ass and not even thinking when they are wrestling and she wraps her legs around his neck with her crotch right in his face. He is given his first operation and he needs someone to go undercover at the Miss United States Beauty Pageant. He and the rest of the FBI on duty at that time (including Gracie) go through the entire roster of FBI agents that are women under 35 in order to find someone who could conceivably go undercover at a beauty pageant. They find no one and never think of asking Gracie. Finally, it comes to them in the middle of a joke and they talk Gracie ino doing it. They turn her over to Vic (Michael Caine), a pageant professional who coaches beauty queens to victory. Vic has his work cut out for him and with all of the resources at our government's disposal, Vic turns this ugly duckling in to a swan.

With disdain in her every movement, Gracie joins the ladies at the pageant. As she has no friends except Eric and the other agents at the FBI, and she doesn't act "feminine," Gracie finds it difficult to fit in. But with the help of some gracious pageant mates, she learns what having sistahs is all about. In a very short period of time, Gracie needs to learn how to be feminine, learn how to trust her instincts, learn how to commune with other women, and learn that the job is really not her life. She needs to learn all this while balancing on heels and wearing a bikini for a swimsuit competition.

Miss Congeniality pissed me off on several occasions. I don't find it fun to watch the "guys" sitting around making fun of all the female agents on the FBI roster and doing surveillance behind the scenes at a beauty pageant while cat calling and drooling all over themselves. But I think these scenes made a point. Women are beautiful, and men are stupid enough not to keep the fact to themselves that they find beautiful women incapacitating enough to make them behave like complete morons. This makes them weak. Or, maybe these scenes didn't make a point. Maybe the point is boys will be boys and that's how it is, so why get all hot under the collar about it?

Bullock's character Gracie is hysterically funny. The faces she makes, the rolling of her eyes, the things she says and does, she is laugh-out-loud-slap-your-thigh funny. Gracie is also sad, cocooning herself away from those who would think her weird. She has missed out a lot on life. The Pygmalion part of this story is just to get people to the theater, I think. What Gracie learns is not to be judgmental in an effort to stop others from judging you. Gracie also learns the power of women in relationships. How a short talk with someone can make you feel like a million bucks because you just spent five minutes making her feel better. She learns that women can be catty and turn around and be absolutely wonderful. She learns that under every beauty there isn't a beast. She learns that it is better to win the Miss Congeniality prize than the Miss United States prize. Gracie learns that she can be herself and adorable and goofy and get the good-looking guy. Of course, it is only when she is the good-looking girl, which makes the movie falter in my mind. (However, he was just as concerned with her breasts when she was wearing her male-togs as when she was in her formal and he knows she can kick his ass.)

This movie was really very good. It has a lot of laughs, a smidgen of mystery, a little bit of romance, and something to say. Or maybe nothing to say - maybe it was just meant to be entertaining. And on that score, it succeeded.

Jamie Bell as BILLY ELLIOT - God, do you want a little slice of that kid in your life? I know that I do. If the world of cinema were fair, Jamie Bell would receive every award there was to give. He'd be placed on the shoulders of the greats and paraded to and fro. He would be heralded as the next coming. This is what acting is all about - unbelievably real. This story has been told so many times (especially in films from the UK) that it could get bothersome if they didn't find new and fantastic ways to tell it - Hear My Song, The Full Monty, and even to some extent Saving Grace and Waking Ned Devine. Someone who either knew-nothing-but, or has-just-stumbled-upon hard times, finds a way to either move up, move out or move on.

The film opens on Billy's exuberant display of childhood. He is jumping on a bed to an off-limits album of his brother's. We soon see him racing down the stairs to rescue some eggs from boiling and toast from the toaster. He is preparing a tray for someone and when he goes to serve it, that someone is gone. Billy's playfulness vanishes and childlike panic ensues. Billy is clearly in trouble. He races out of the house and down the lane in search of whomever it is that is gone. In short order he finds her...an older lady, wandering in a field, clearly confused. Billy touches her shoulder and she rears on him in fear. She does not know who he is. Billy's relief turns to heartwrenching sadness, "It's me." he says, "Billy." It is his grandmother.

In about five minutes of viewing, I knew that I was in for something pretty spectacular based solely on what I had been shown in three scenes with one character. I wasn't mistaken. Yes, this is the story of a boy who found he wanted to be a ballet dancer. Odds were against him, he was poor, the son of a miner on strike. The son of a macho miner on strike, that is. His mother has died. She didn't get hit by a car, whatever killed her gave her enough time to write Billy a letter to read when he turned eighteen. He opened it early and knew it by heart. His father is lost without his wife, it is clear he is uncertain how to parent, but I'm not sure he even knows how to live without her, and that is a hard lesson to learn. His brother is also a miner and is angry, the strike is only a facade, no one wants to grow up and go down in a pit every day of his life. Poverty surrounds them, on their block, on the wallpaper in their home, in the old gym where Billy goes for boxing lessons using his grandfather's boxing gloves, in the old hand-me-down sweaters Billy wears. It is like quicksand, it doesn't matter how far you run or how much you dance, you can't get out of it and it just sucks you deeper and deeper until you can't breathe.

But poverty isn't the only thing Billy endures, nor is finding a love of something that is not accepted. Billy has lost his mother. She would know what to do. She would help him to find a way to be what he truly wanted to be. She's not there, though, and it would seem Billy is lost. His father is useless, his brother is angry and his grandmother is senile. In the end, no one does it but Billy. With a little explanation, someone letting him talk about what he feels, what is going on inside his eleven year old body and mind, he finds his way (and does exactly what his mother wanted him to do, seven years early). There is the ballet teacher who immediately sees something in Billy. There is the father who finds out that he is a better father than he ever expected himself to be. There is the brother who doesn't know how to show any emotion but anger, but learns in the end. There is a Nana who wants to see Billy live her dream.

Mishandled, this all could have been horrible, trite, boring, silly...but it isn't. Jamie Bell consumes the character and convinces you that he is Billy. When he is in a scene, your eyes go straight to him. As he attempts to rub away the graffitti on his mother's tombstone and takes out a pair of scissors to clip the grass on her grave, you believe. As he confronts his father in the gym, dancing for him with everything he has, you believe. When he escapes into his mind and dances angrily through the streets of his home, right to the dead end, you believe. There is nothing hokey about any of this. It is clear, it is fresh, it is real and it is beautiful.

Jamie Bell created all of that. I know there was a good writer (Lee Hall) behind this, definitely a good director (Stephen Daldry), and clearly a talented supporting cast. But it is Bell who pulls off Billy Elliot. I am convinced that it is Bell who has made this the film all that it is. So, if this world were fair, the Globes, the Oscars, this critic's awards and that society's awards, Bell would get them all. He moved me, for as long as the movie played, he took me along with him and I was glad to go. When Billy soared across the stage, I soared with him. It was magnificent.

 

CineScene, 2001