Miss Congeniality doesn’t take first place, but it does have heart. When a terrorist bomber threatens the Miss America beauty pageant the FBI only has one agent, Gracie Hart, with both the training and the looks to go undercover in the pageant as a contestant. The problem is that Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullock, is less in touch with her feminine side then most men are, has poor people skills and is regarded as a loose cannon by her supervisors. Can she rise above these handicaps, even with the help of one of the best beauty pageant coordinator’s in the business, in order to fit in long enough to keep the pageant from going boom?

Miss Congeniality was fun and well worth seeing, but I keep feeling that there was a potentially better, funnier film just beneath the surface that the writer’s and director hadn’t scratched. A little more subtlety and a little less physical comedy would have gone a long way to improving this movie. Bullock does a good enough job especially during the part of the film in which she has blossomed, for want of a better word, into the beautiful, poised women she has the potential to be. However she’s never really convincing in the earlier part as a female, macho slob, but then the character was written so over the top, with manners and a cleanliness ethic that would have offended Oscar Madison of The Odd Couple, that I don’t think any actress could have pulled that part of the role off convincingly . William Shatner gets a few good laughs as the clueless Master of Ceremony for the pageant, but ultimately it’s Michael Caine who steals the show as the acerbic beauty pageant coordinator hired by the FBI to prepare Gracie Hart for her part in the pageant. Had the give and take between his character and Bullock’s been given more air time Miss Congeniality would have been the better for it.

Oddly enough for a comedy a little more seriousness could have helped the film as well. Instead of beating the audience over the head with what a slob Bullock’s character is it might have made the film more interesting if her reluctance to be a part of the pageant had come from her own lack of comfort with herself as, not only as a woman, but a beautiful woman at that. Also, the villains, who will remain nameless so as to avoid spoilers, and their motivations were not very credible.

But even though it isn’t everything it could have been Miss Congeniality is still good for a lot of laughs.

Grade: B

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