Movie Review: Miss Congeniality

"Miss Congeniality" is a 2000 comedy, starring Sandra Bullock as Gracie Hart; a cop who has to go undercover in a Beauty Pageant in order to investigate and stop a terrorist bombing attack.

Reviews were mixed, either loving or hating it, and most with different ideas of what genre, exactly, the movie was supposed to be.

Did the friends-to-lovers romance, disaster-to-desire makeover, and beauty-pageant setting make it a chick flick or rom com? Did the strong female lead make it a turn-of-the-millennium feminist movie? Was it a cop comedy? Satire or support for beauty pageants in general?

Honestly, it's kind of "All of the Above".

It's scripted as a comedy, leaning heavily on the Makeover trope where the unfeminine female lead turns out to be a knockout when she puts a little effort in, earning the attention and eventually the love of the romantic male lead, who had previously been just a friend, co-worker or near-stranger.

It's also a movie with strong feminist undertones, and surprisingly progressive for the early '00s.

Grace starts the Movie with Massive “Not Like Those Other Girls” energy.

She’s tough, she can face down her co-workers, she’s not domestic or fashionable, and she doesn’t want to be. She was the girl playground bullies feared and bullied kids resented. She's a cop, and as tough as the job implies. Femininity is something to be scorned, not striven for.

In fact, Gracie is so anti-femininity that she wasn't even considered as an undercover agent until they'd exhausted all the other possibilities and moved onto photoshopping the entire precinct into swimsuits and evening gowns as a joke. The only people talking up looks as a power to be utilized are the cops who go home with a different girl every night, and the pageant organizers, who have an obvious bias. The underlying message is not subtle.

Even on the way to the Pageant, Grace, the new "Miss New Jersey", spends most of the flight mocking past Beauty Queens while doing her research on how to pass as one.

Despite this, the movie wastes very little time flipping this trope on it's head.

Gracie's scorn is a big part of why she struggles to connect with the other contestants for most of the movie, hindering her own progress. She sees them as Airhead Beauty QueensTM, competing for popularity points more than the scholarship, not as women with lives and struggles and motivations of their own. Thoughtless remarks lead to Grace eating her own words. Stumbling in an unfamiliar environment leads to getting to know the other contestants as people. Listening to the all-male commentary through her wired earpiece with a certain amount of annoyance requires Grace to consider her own prejudices.

Ultimately, it’s two of the very things Grace always scorned that provide the information she needs to solve the mystery: gossip and girl-talk, and fashion. Respecting the other contestants as intelligent and worth listening to finally leads Grace to the break she needs.

And that new understanding only comes after Gracie abandons being the tough-girl for being compassionate when her new friend and fellow contestant, Miss Rhode Island, drunkenly confesses to joining in order to try and move past a traumatic event. This leads to the other contestants banding together to look after her, speaking more openly and honestly in a sense of solidarity.

In the Pageant Interview scene, Grace is explicitly asked "what do you think of people who scorn beauty pageants as stupid and exploitative?", and her answer shows just how far she's come on this personal journey. Paraphrased, she answers that she used to be one of those people, until she came to the pageant and met the other contestants, who changed her opinion by being their determined, confident, feminine selves.

It’s also worth noting that Grace’s dismissiveness is explicitly contrasted against the open kindness that the contestants show her. Sure, they’re in competition right now, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t welcome a Newbie and show her the ropes. Sure, she’s a little weird, sometimes, but there’s nothing in the Pageant Rules that disqualify you for being quirky.

Water-flutes and self-defence aren't traditional talents, but good on her for trying something new. Every contestant was a beginner once, and we don't judge anyone's reasons for entering.

It's the kind of unconditional acceptance that Gracie hasn't experienced for a long time.

As a girl, she could be tougher than everyone else, or she could be the victim. To advance in the Force, she needed a skill-set that had very little room for make-up and beauty routines or dressing nicely. De-escalation and negotiation tactics are different to small talk or flirting, so Gracie dismissed the latter entirely.

Grace spent so long earning respect by being One Of The Guys, that she forget that being One Of The Girls wasn’t something to be ashamed of.