Miss Congeniality 2- DVD Review

I know that the word "sequel" is supposed to mean instant box office success and instant critical failure and I hate to fall into the stereotypes but how did it come to this? Challenging The Whole Ten Yards and Agent Cody Banks 2 for the title of "least asked for sequel", we now have this contest entry, Miss Congeniality 2, a movie filled with likable people given nothing to do but bank off the minimal goodwill created by the enjoyably harmless original. Why write an actual script when you know people will show up just because they liked the original? And that's the problem with the sequel craze, lack of any development or risk taking. That's how it came to this.

Picking up where the original left off, minus Benjamin Bratt, Gracie (Bullock) now has to become the pretty face of the FBI, as she's too recognizable for undercover work. After Miss United States (Burns) and Mr. Fields (Shatner) are kidnapped and held for ransom, Gracie and two new sidekicks (the grumpy King and the flaming Bader) head to Vegas to solve the crime. Of course, there's a new love interest (Murciano), a new authority figure to thwart our heroines (Williams), and a new villain or two. A couple of minor chuckles, a couple of flashy set pieces, you can probably predict the routine.

The original Miss Congeniality was no comedy landmark but it at least had a fish-out-of-water premise to keep it going. The new one has so little script that it's hard to even think what the pitch was during the original meeting (my guess would be that it involved dollar figures). Yes, Bullock and King have different character speeds and there are plenty of pretty costumes and sets but they've even taken the very core of the Gracie Hart character out of the picture by making her a fish comfortable being out of water. And as great as Regina King always is, even in something like this, she's not given enough of a character arc to be the hero. Basically, writer Marc Lawrence forgot to give us something or someone to root for. In the original, we at least had the development of Bullock's character from crass to class to keep us entertained but the new one has no such arc. All we're supposed to be interested in is the kidnapping plotline and the relationships between the leads. A little bit of friendship, a little bit of romance, a little bit of comedy. It's all not enough.

I know that I should stop asking so much from a movie with a title like Armed and Fabulous but just how forgettable this one ends up being is indicative of the biggest problem with the current sequel glut. The failure of Miss Congeniality 2 isn't so much that it doesn't do anything new; it's that it doesn't try to do anything at all. Some sequels at least feel as fully thought out and developed as the original, occasionally more so (Spider-man 2), but lately they feel so blatantly financially driven and film should always be, first and foremost, artistically driven. It's impossible to truly hate Miss Congeniality 2 because it doesn't provoke any emotions that strong. It's just another entry in the completely harmless and completely forgettable sequel craze.