Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (2005)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

John Pasquin

Writers (WGA):

Marc Lawrence (characters) &
Katie Ford (characters) ...

Release Date:

24 March 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Comedy | Crime

Plot:

After Cheryl Frasier and Stan Fields are kidnapped, Gracie goes undercover in Las Vegas to find them.

Plot Keywords:

FBI | FBI Agent | Undercover | Martial Arts | Las Vegas Nevada

Awards:

1 win & 2 nominations

Cast

Sandra Bullock	...	Gracie Hart
Regina King	...	Sam Fuller
Enrique Murciano	...	Jeff Foreman
William Shatner	...	Stan Fields
Ernie Hudson	...	FBI Asst. Director Harry McDonald
Heather Burns	...	Cheryl Frasier
Diedrich Bader	...	Joel Meyers
Treat Williams	...	FBI Asst. Director Walter Collins
Abraham Benrubi	...	Lou Steele
Nick Offerman	...	Karl Steele
Eileen Brennan	...	Carol Fields
Elisabeth Röhm	...	Agent Janet McKaren
Leslie Grossman	...	Pam
Lusia Strus	...	Janine
Molly Gottlieb	...	Priscilla

Also Known As:

Miss Congeniality 2 (USA) (working title)
Miss Congeniality: Armed and Fabulous (USA) (working title)
Untitled Miss Congeniality Sequel (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sex-related humor.

Runtime:

115 min

Country:

USA | Australia

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Taiwan:PG-12 | Iceland:L | Malaysia:U | Switzerland:12 (canton of Zurich) | South Korea:12 | Argentina:Atp | Australia:M | Chile:TE | Finland:K-11 | Germany:12 | Hong Kong:IIA | Ireland:12A | Netherlands:MG6 | Norway:11 | Peru:PT | Philippines:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | Sweden:11 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | USA:PG-13 | UK:12 (video rating) (2005) | UK:12A (original rating) | Brazil:12

Filming Locations:

7 Lincoln Square, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Castle Rock Entertainment

Trivia:

Eileen Brennan, who plays Stan Fields' mom, is actually a year younger than William Shatner, who plays Stan Fields. He was born in 1931, she was born in 1932.

Goofs:

Errors in geography: While Hart, Fuller, and Foreman are in the car just before the arrival at the Venetian Hotel, the M&M / CocaCola stores can be seen in the background across the street. This means they are traveling south on the strip, yet moments later, they get to the hotel which is on the same side of the street as the M&M / CocaCola stores and much further north.

Quotes:

[first lines]
[FBI agents in a Jim & Dan's Fine Foods van on their way to the bank for a sting operation]
Clonsky: Hey Hart, can you give me Miss Arizona's number?
Gracie Hart: Why would I do that Clonsky?
Clonsky: Cause she needs a man in her life.
Gracie Hart: Yeah, where do you fit in?

Movie Connections:

References "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (1986)

Soundtrack:

What Is Gossip

"What's aught but as 'tis valued?"

The reviews of this film have ranged from high praise to intense dislike. Such an extreme range calls for some reflection on how reviewers look at films and how movie lovers may differ in their expectations. Reviewers, by and large hate sequels; movie lovers, by and large, flock to see them. This suggests a crucial difference: reviewers tend to want something new to reawaken their jaded palettes; movie lovers feel comfortable being reintroduced to characters they already know. Many reviewers attacked "Miss Congeniality 2" because it seemed to them to be more of the same, not something new and exciting. This rule does not hold for Quentin Tarantino movies, which seem to be praised for revitalizing old, dead, conventions mostly by rejecting a sequential narrative; by scrambling sets of old clichés from pulp fictions, Tarantino, we are told, revitalizes them, though they seem to me to be essentially old clichés still. The question of course is whether the basic premise is valid. The NY Times reviewer who blasted the opening night presentation of "Bringing up Baby" (starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant) condemned it in much the same terms that are still used for movies that feature both comedy and romance: clichéd, tedious, predictable. Audiences, however, who tend to like happy endings when they go to a comedy, have demonstrated their preferences in theaters, on TV, and on video and DVD. Subsequent critics have ranked "Baby" as one of the best of the screwball comedies and one of the best romantic comedies ever.

Instead of demanding novelty—which reviewers frequently reject when they find it, as in the case of Bullock's "Practical Magic," which for some reviewers unforgivably mixed love, witchcraft, and vengeful spirits of the dead, making it difficult to classify (was it a children's movie? A family movie? A horror flick? a romance?), reviewers might do better not to let their expectations freeze out anything on the screen not preprogrammed by the title, but to actually think about the movie they are watching. Bullock, who participated in what she has declared one of the worst movie sequels ever produced, "Speed 2," might be expected to be especially shy about being involved in a sequel unless it could do something the first one didn't. I think this one does: instead of a romantic comedy, it is an action movie with no romantic interest for the star, unless it is her initially reluctant partner, Sam Fuller, a woman (Regina King) enraged at pretty much everything, but especially macho men whom she delights in tossing about the FBI physical combat workout room like dolls, who ends up saving her life and becoming her partner (no one else will work with either) in the same way that Briggs and Murtaugh became an odd couple in the "Lethal Weapon" series, an example Bullock has cited in some interviews. Bullock, an ex "America's sweetheart," presents Gracie as a "STAR" whose ego is blown up by the adulation she receives as America's newest celebrity when she becomes the PR Face of the FBI. Many reviewers tried to personalize this, though the standard litany about the actress is that she is easy to get along with, personable, helping, caring, etc. (I haven't seen any attempts to blame the movie on her greed; perhaps if she hadn't donated a million dollars after 9/11 and another million after the tsunami, that could have been a handy brush with which to tar her and the movie as well). As the references to other celebrities (like Dolly Parton, Regis, and Wayne Newton) suggest, though critics don't like celebrities, the buyers of US, People, and the tabloids clearly do. Bullock's comment seems to be clear at the end: Gracie will write no more books nor offer any more comments; all she wants to do is her job. A final theme in the movie seems to arise out of Sam Fuller's propensity for violence, a propensity Gracie shares at moments when she isn't being a talk show version of FBI Barbie. Yet at the end of the movie, when Gracie threatens a class of elementary school students unless they quiet down, it is clear that violence appeals to her at the same time that she wishes it didn't. "Miss Congeniality" (made when Bill Clinton was still President and the greatest threat to government was unrestrained sexual desire) ended with Gracie, newly crowned as Miss Congeniality, insisting that, like the other contestants (whom she had mocked earlier), she really did want "world peace. "Miss Congeniality 2" (made after the invasion of Iraq) ends with Gracie looking directly at the audience and affirming that indeed we really do need world peace.

I imagine that having to sit through several movies a week could get tedious, but I'm not sure this entitles reviewers to rain down their ire on good and bad movies alike. Certainly a little more tentativeness and a bit less certainty about the worth of movies they see only quickly (and whose plots they frequently summarize incorrectly) might make them less liable to the judgments of those who will be blessed with hindsight and the chance to think about movies before they are required to come to judgment upon them.