www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/03/25/2003247763
Wikipedia Bullock shovels bullshit in Congeniality' sequel The actress turns in a tired performance, the script is bad and the direc ting is flawlessly awful By Manohla Dargis NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE Friday, Mar 25, 2005,Page 16 PHOTO: AP Wading through this junky sequel to her genial goofball hit Miss Congenia lity, Sandra Bullock looks as if she would rather be shoveling pig waste -- though of course in some respects that is exactly what she's doing. Set a mere three weeks after the first film, which was released in 2000, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous finds Bullock as the charmingly clumsy FBI agent, Gracie Hart, vainly fending off unwanted celebrity. On her last assignment, Gracie infiltrated a beauty pageant by metamorpho sing from duckling to swan, a mission that earned her legions of female fans across the country. After Gracie's cover is blown during a bank heist, endangering her and ev ery other undercover agent on her team, the powers that be decide that s he should become "the face of the FBI." Gracie, hurt after being dumped by a romantic prospect (the agent played in the first go around by Benja min Bratt, wisely nowhere to be seen or heard here), agrees to the reass ignment on the tenuous grounds that flouncing about in designer threads is better for her soul and career than pushing pencils. Film Notes: 'Miss Congeniality 2' Directed by: John Pasquin Starring: Sandra Bullock (Gracie Hart), Regina King (Sam Fuller), Enrique Murciano (Jeff Foreman), William Shatner (Stan Fields), Ernie Hudson (M cDonald), Heather Burns (Cheryl), Diedrich Bader (Joel) and Treat Willia ms (Collins) Running time: 100 minutes Taiwan Release: tonight And so, after a consult with the obligatory swishy style guru, Joel (Died rich Bader), Gracie undergoes yet another transformation, one designed t o strip every gram of charm and integrity from her character. Usually an effervescent screen presence, Bullock turns in a performance a s flat as day-old champagne. It's hard not to blame her, particularly gi ven the shoddy work by both the screenwriter Marc Lawrence, who helped w rite the first Miss Congeniality, and the director John Pasquin, whose p revious crimes against cinema include the Tim Allen vehicle The Santa Cl ause. It isn't just that Miss Congeniality 2 is nearly absent a single g enuine laugh; it's that instead of a screenplay and a story we now have stereotypes and sketch comedy. In place of screwball heroics and wish-fu lfillment the filmmakers give us jokes about tampons and some curious ge nder unease, particularly between Gracie and an angry female agent with the abominably cutesy name of Sam Fuller. Played by the talented actress Regina King, Agent Fuller spends much of t he movie smacking Gracie around really, really hard, a peculiar tic that only becomes more peculiar as the movie dribbles along. In between the feeble glimmerings of a plot and a hailstorm of body blows, the two wome n develop a grudging admiration for each other that should by the logic of the cliches both women have assumed -- Sam's all man, Gracie's all gi rl -- led into an intimate clinch. Instead, the sub rosa romance between Gracie and Sam is qu ashed in favor of way too many uneasy, unfunny jokes pegged to gay men. As it turns out, being fabulous is far more dangerous for a woman (and a movie star) than being armed.
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