Skywalkers (12/22/00)
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Miss Congeniality. [Donald Petrie, 2000.]
When a Unabomber clone threatens the destruction of a national beauty pageant run by somewhat unbalanced former queen Candice Bergen [here more than a few splitends short of a coiffure], the FBI takes time off from its busy schedule of bungling espionage cases to attempt to confound his scheme by inserting undercover agent Sandra Bullock into the proceedings as Miss New Jersey; since our heroine is here represented as a nosepicking tomboy incapable of making herself up or balancing on heels, contest coach Michael Caine is called in to effect the overnight makeover that turns the badhaired ugly duckling into a bikiniwaxed swan. The bornagain bimbo bonds with her fellow contestants, thwarts the mad bomber, and gives fellow agent Benjamin Bratt the boner he should have had all along; for, though it somehow escapes the notice of Hollywood, when you scrape the makeup off her and tangle up her hair Ms. Bullock is still the cutest geek on Earth. — Actually pretty funny; for once not every good line appeared in the trailer. Photographed by the great Laszlo [
Easy Rider] Kovacs. — With William Shatner as, well, William Shatner; who could now replace him?
[Ms. Bullock, incidentally, claims to have learned the virtues of hemorrhoid cream as a beauty treatment during the making of this feature: “Apparently butt-cream helps the lines around the eyes. That’s the important tip...In fact, in all my acting days that is the most astounding piece of information I’ve ever heard.”]
____________The tears of a clone (12/19/00)
