# Beautiful (2000)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

    PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
    "We Put the SIN in Cinema"

Sally Fields' feature film directorial debut is an atrocious story of a woman hell bent on becoming a beauty pageant winner. The problem is that Beautiful can't figure out whether it wants to be a coming-of-age drama or a scathing comedy about the absurdity of pageants. Instead of choosing one, the film tries to be both, and the net result is an uneven picture that runs about thirty minutes too long.

Beautiful opens in 1986, where thirteen-year-old Naperville, Illinois resident Mona Hibbard is shown getting braces. She's paying for the corrective procedure with her own money (in monthly installments) and is thrilled when the dentist tells her that they'll be off in time for the Junior Miss Pageant.

We learn that Mona is a bitchy piece of white trash with a mother who ignores her and a stepfather who wants to molest her. Instead of pouring her time and energy into a expensive and time-consuming drug and/or alcohol habit (like most American kids in similar situations), Mona instead devotes her life to one simple idea – becoming a beauty queen. Her only friendship is one made out of convenience – mousy grammar school seamstress Ruby can help Mona create different outfits for her run at various pageants.

Flash to 1999, where Mona (Minnie Driver, Return to Me) has just won the Illinois state pageant, earning a trip to the prestigious Miss American Miss competition in Long Beach, California. The next two cinematic months unfold over an ungodly ninety-plus minutes. We learn that Mona has sabotaged her rivals on several occasions, and more shockingly, had a baby that she pawned off on Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams, Big Daddy) to raise as her own. Why? Because Miss American Miss contestants can't be mothers.

To make matters worse, Mona can't stand the sight of her own daughter, Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg , the kid from the Pepsi commercials). The two constantly butt heads, and, coupled with Mona's inability to deal with real life, Ruby essentially becomes a mother to both. But after a oddly grim mix-up at Ruby's employer, Mona has to look after Vanessa, bringing out the motherly instinct that she had never shown previously.

Beautiful's script was written (and co-produced) by Jon Bernstein, whose only previous writing credit was the appalling Jerry Springer film Ringmaster. It's difficult to say whether the film had a weak, choppy script, or if Fields insisted on cramming too much into the final product. In addition to blowing an abnormally large chunk of time on Mona's childhood, Beautiful spends way too much time on the final pageant. Do we really need to see the entire talent portion of each of the competition's five finalists? Tom make matters worse, the film has an ending that will make you cringe, unless you enjoyed the last scene of Rudy.

The best thing about Beautiful is the casting. Driver and Eisenberg look like they could be related, but is that really enough to keep an entire two-hour movie afloat? The film's moral is that it's okay to lie and hurt other people, so long as you eventually end up on top. And, unlike other films about single-minded egomaniacs (like Wall Street), Mona walks away from her experience as a winner, a hero and a role model. Beautiful sure isn't pretty. In fact, it's downright ugly.

On the plus side, the film could (hopefully) be the final nail in the coffin of Destination Films – the studio that has given us the impressively bad lineup of Whipped, Bats, Thomas and the Magic Railroad and Eye of the Beholder.

1:52 – PG-13 for adult language and thematic elements

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