Herald rating: * *
It's a mystery why anyone thought that a sequel to 2000's Miss Congeniality was a good idea. In the first, Sandra Bullock's Gracie Hart was transformed from a clumsy, ungroomed, aggressive FBI agent into a beauty pageant contestant. In this sequel she gets turned back into
an FBI agent, but not before we've suffered through her high-maintenance Paris Hilton routine.
The story kicks off shortly after Gracie has saved Miss United States from having her head blown off by a bomb hidden in her coveted crown. Suddenly famous because to her pageant heroics, returning to work as an undercover FBI agent is difficult.
To capitalise on her public popularity, her boss decides it would be a good idea for Gracie to become the face of the FBI. As she can't go undercover without being busted for autographs any longer, she reluctantly agrees.
So, we're back to where we started in the first film. Enter the camp stylist, the makeup artist and the hairdresser whose jobs are to turn Gracie into a media darling and to promote the FBI and her new, best-selling autobiography - in designer outfits, and perfectly applied makeup.
Unlike Miss Congeniality, where Gracie scoffed at this kind of behaviour, she laps it up in this film, and turns into an unlikeable high-maintenance princess. It takes another crisis at the pageant and a hard-hitting sidekick (King) to bring her back down to earth.
Bullock is just going through her paces with this film. She knows there is no saving it from a weak script and its predictability, so relies on her likeablity to carry it off. It's hard not to forgive her for her choices and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Dangerous raises the occasional smile - the one you use when you've been told the same joke twice.
CAST: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, Enrique Muricano
DIRECTOR: John Pasquin
RUNNING TIME: 115 mins
RATING: M (low level violence)
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts and Berkeley Cinemas
