Movie Review: Beautiful
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What Parents Should Know
The movie has occasional strong language and sexual
references (mild by PG-13 standards, but still vivid). Mona
cheats in the pageants, causing serious damage to another
contestent's hand, without any remorse. Indeed the injured
woman's bitterness is portrayed with as much callousness as
though the screenwriter shared Mona's conviction that all that
counts is winning. There is an out of wedlock pregnancy and a
minor character commits suicide by taking pills.
Families who see this movie could talk about Mona's comment that love is a language that has to be taught, and Ruby's comment about letting bad things go. More cynical family members may want to count up the logical inconsistencies and plot holes.
Common Sense Media Review
Minnie Driver does her best, but, sadly, she gets no help
from the movie's producers (14 of them!). She gets no help from
the screenwriter, whose only previous credit was Jerry
Springer's "Ringmaster." Driver does not even get much help
from first-time feature director (but two-time Best Actress)
Sally Field. In other words, this is a bad movie.
The people in this movie can't even be referred to as "characters" because they do not behave like any human being who ever thought, spoke, or breathed. The actors might as well be wearing signs that say, "Plot device!" as they are moved around the set like chess pieces, because that is the only possible explanation for their behavior. And basic elements of plot are slapdash or just missing.
Mona is a little girl who lives with a mother who does not seem to care much about her and with her mother's out-of-work boyfriend, who does not like her at all. So, she makes her bedroom into a private world, decorated with cheery little signs that say things like, "Never give up!" and "U can do it!" For her, beauty pageants are a vision of perfection, grace, and validation. So, she decides that what she needs to make her feel beautiful and loved is to win one or maybe all of them. She earns money for lessons and braces and does statistical analysis of each year's winners. She picks just one girl from school to be her friend -- the one who can sew costumes for her.
When she grows up, Mona (Minnie Driver) is relentless. She is incapable of any thought that does not relate to winning a pageant. Her friend Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) is happy to devote all of her efforts to Mona's competitions, too. When obstacles arise, Ruby takes care of them, from smoothing over allegations of cheating at a pageant to becoming the mother of Mona's child (Hallie Eisenberg, the little girl from the Pepsi commercials). A parent or guardian is ineligible to be Miss American Miss. And nothing must get in Mona's way.
Beauty pageants certainly provide material enough for several movies, and some, like "Smile," manage to do them justice. But this movie has no point of view, a wildly inconsistent tone, and no understanding of its characters -- I mean people.
