 |
|
|
Beautiful by Michael Atkinson Justice--cosmic fairness--is Sally Field making her directorial debut (if she does in fact absolutely need to make her directorial debut) with a little noticed, little watched, little hyped basic-cable soaper. But Justice knows not Hollywood, and so Beautiful, the treacliest of treacly beauty pageant dramedies, hits theaters with a muffled sigh. The unchecked viaduct of cable programming is where it belongs, despite the lead presence of Minnie Driver as an aging pageant go-getter. The idea of the idiosyncratically lovely but decidedly un-beauty-queen-like Driver aiming for Miss America is enough to suggest that Field, working with a script by Jon Bernstein, is several parsecs away from reality, but Beautiful turns out to be even more tiresome: it's not a plausible drama or even a gargoyle-packed satire like Drop Dead Gorgeous. It is, instead, a painfully obvious sermon about pageantry and the American adoration of good looks, which, in case you haven't heard, are only skin deep. PAGE 1 | 2 |
|
|
|
|
Driver's Mona is a juggernaut of contest desire; after losing a few local contests, she grows up and has a child (that fuzzy-haired urchin from Pepsi commercials, Hallie Kate Eisenberg) whom, because she still doesn't want to abandon her shallow dream of being a pageant winner, Mona pawns off on her best friend (a need-a-new-agent Joey Lauren Adams). But mother and daughter look alike, and Mona is perpetually tortured by her responsibilities and her desire for the stupidest fame in America. Which leaves us, the audience, wishing she'd walk into a grain combine. Mush-minded where it should've been sharp and so drunk with sodden clichés it virtually stumbles from one emotional peak to another, Beautiful is no more or less than the movie you'd expect from Field, who in terms of narrative sophistication and thematic depth has apparently not traveled so far from The Flying Nun. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |