Hey folks, Harry here... seems DESTINATION films is keeping their batting average perfect... nothing but misses so far... big goose-eggs all the way across the board. Capone is vicious in his assault on this film... he's swinging his bat, emptying his tommy-gun... he loathes this thing... and I can't begin to do it as well as he... here he goes....
Hey Harry. Capone in Chicago here with a review of a piece of crap called BEAUTIFUL.
Here’s what Destination Films says the new Minnie Driver movie BEAUTIFUL is about:
“On her journey to become the next Miss American Miss, a young woman is forced to re-evaluate her life's goal and, in the process, discovers what's really important and what it truly means to be... Beautiful.”
Give me a break! If you have the same reaction that I did to reading this, then you have a pretty good idea how you’re going to feel after seeing BEAUTIFUL, a trite piece of sentimental hooey that rings false at every step.
The film’s first major flaw is that everyone in the film is at different levels of unpleasant. Minnie Driver’s Mona Hibbard (a real beauty queen name) is selfish, phony, and often cruel when the camera aren’t on her; her mother and stepfather hate her for no particular reason other than she’s successful and they are white trash; the other beauty pageant contestants are clones of Mona. Who are we supposed to care about? The only possible answer to that question is Mona’s best friend Ruby, played by Joey Lauren Adams (CHASING AMY). Only, she’s do subservient and plain next to Mona that I never bought for a second these two would be friends.
As a result, I ended up hating Ruby because she was friends with such a bitch. Mona has wanted to be a beauty queen all her life at any price. She gets pregnant at a young age (I think she was supposed to be in high school at that point), but since most beauty pageant contestants can’t have children, she pawns off the kid to Ruby. When she grows up, the little girl becomes that brat from the Pepsi commercials, Hallie Kate Eisenberg. (I think she was also in BICENTENNIAL MAN as one of the incarnations of Little Miss.) The little girl, Vanessa, grows up thinking Ruby is her mother and hating Mona, the same way Mona hates her own mother. (The irony!)
Through what might be one of the most convoluted plot turns in history, Ruby (a nurse at a nursing home) ends up in prison suspected of killing a patient who died of a medication overdoes. This event just happens to coincide with the big Miss American Miss pageant. (I guess they weren’t allowed to use the Miss America trademark.) Anyway, Mona ends up taking Vanessa with her to the pageant. Since the two look so much alike, other contestants start gossiping that the two might be related. A new reporter (and former beauty pageant contestant that Mona sabotaged years before) decides to do a little digging and ruin Mona’s chances of winning the contest. You can probably guess from the studio blurb above, how things turn out.
I hated every minute of BEAUTIFUL. There’s no doubt that Minnie Driver is a great actress, but she is capable of so much better and her agreeing to be in the film makes me really nervous for her career. It’s that bad. There are supporting parts for Kathleen Turner and Michael McKean that amount to zilch. The film offers up no insight into the world of beauty pageants. I’d even go so far as to say that the writer John Bernstein has never even watched a beauty pageant, let alone spend any time talking to contestants or organizers. I think the person that’s going to suffer the most for being a part of this mess is first-time feature director Sally Field.
The other huge problem I had with this movie is that absolutely none of it felt real. The news reporter’s behavior (and even her broadcasting technique) was ridiculous and unbelievable. The cruel behavior of Mona’s parents is totally unmotivated (not that you need a reason to be mean to someone, but give us something, people). But the worst offense is the totally implausible and dumb, dumb, dumb ending. I want to ruin it for you just so you won’t be even slightly tempted to go, but I’ll restrain myself. BEAUTIFUL fails at every level: as a comedy, as a mother-daughter movie, as a behind-the-scenes film, and as entertainment.
