Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous – Classic Film Review 580

After a string of disappointments, Sandra Bullock in 2005 revisits the scene of her last big success, Miss Congeniality in 2000, and comes up with – another disappointment.

The always-likeable Bullock is fine and funny as tomboy FBI agent Gracie Hart, who reluctantly takes on the job of being lovely and alluring spokesperson for the FBI, before being assigned to a kidnap case involving her old pals Miss USA, Cheryl Frasier (Heather Burns), and manager Stan Fields (William Shatner). And Regina King is also stalwart as Sandra’s grouchy new FBI partner, Sam Fuller (the same name as the cult film director, that’s odd!).

But the clumsy and very old-fashioned comedy is often struggling to raise smiles and rambles on for ages, before finally sparking up for easy laughs involving the ladies impersonating drag queens Connie and Carla-style in a nightclub and busy action at a Las Vegas hotel’s pirate attraction.

Replacing Michael Caine as Sandra’s style guru, Joel Meyers, Diedrich Bader is a horror – though he does get most of the film’s best gags – Enrique Murciano, from TV’s Without a Trace, is left floundering as vapid love interest, Joel Meyers, and poor old Shatner simply seems to have lost the plot.

The film’s showpiece stunt is set at Las Vegas Treasure Island’s Sirten show, meticulously re-created as a scale replica and filmed at Warner Bros’ studio soundstage water tank in Burbank, built in the 30s, but re-excavated and expanded from 8ft to 22ft deep for The Perfect Storm in 2000.

The script’s the problem, of course, but with the three original writers Marc Lawrence, Katie Ford and Caryn Lucas reconvened, it should have been wittier, funnier and cleverer than this. Bullock just about saves it, though.

Bullock says:  ‘The reason for a sequel is that (writer and producer) Marc Lawrence and I found ourselves on numerous occasions imagining what Gracie would have gone on to do after her big triumph at the pageant and how all the media attention would have affected her.’ In the end, this seems like a story they should probably have best kept to themselves. Lawrence named the main character Gracie after his daughter Grace.

Jesse James, Bullock’s ex-husband, appears briefly as the guy who loses the arm-wrestling contest in the bar. They married 16 July 2005  and divorced 28 June 2010.

 (C) Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Film Review 580 derekwinnert.com