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Beautiful by Stephen Farber The women in Sally Field's feature directorial debut, Beautiful, may be as competitive as an eclectic group of scabs, but the film falls victim to a ponderousness that other movies about competition avoid. The central character is Mona (Minnie Driver), whose lifelong obsession is to win the Miss American Miss beauty pageant. Hollywood's taken on this theme before--in Michael Ritchie's 1975 satire Smile and last year's Drop Dead Gorgeous. So the jokes at the expense of the pageant's yokels, airheads and scheming shrews are already pretty shopworn. Beautiful hopes to transcend its narrow milieu by making a more universal statement about the American obsession to succeed at any price. One can understand why Field, an actress who started out in her teens, would find this theme resonant, having seen firsthand how performers can be stunted by the single-mindedness of their ambition. She brings some genuine anger and bite to scenes that illustrate Mona's burning drive. Minnie Driver is well cast as a girl who compensates in grit and ferocious willpower what she lacks in physical endowments, and the actress bravely exposes her character's ruthless monomania. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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But Jon Bernstein's script is riddled with flaws. A whole heap of melodrama places obstacles in Mona's path, including an illegitimate child (the feisty Hallie Kate Eisenberg) whom she hands over to her best friend Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) to raise. We never do understand why Ruby sacrifices herself so abjectly, and the plotline involving Ruby's arrest for murder is way too farfetched to swallow--to say nothing of the heart-tugging finale, which is questionable on many counts. Mona is portrayed as such a selfish gorgon that we don't want her to triumph, so the exultant conclusion seems miscalculated. Beautiful has many tart, enjoyable moments, but it falters badly at the finish, which only goes to prove that the protagonist emerging victorious isn't always the most satisfying denouement for a tale of cutthroat competition. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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