Shaw's Pygmallion legend finds itself in the funniest places, probably best known in "Guys and Dolls" and "My Fair lady." The doll or lady here is a tomboy FBI agent, reluctantly surrendering herself to a new persona, "Miss Congeniality," a beauty queen.
Actually, agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) is no doll, and that's the problem, or one of them, at the heart of this latest Pygmallion interpretation. The other problem is that she has to pose as a beauty pageant contestant in order to thwart a terrorist who has threatened to bomb Miss United States. How very tacky.
Now Bullock, of course, is a doll. However, as a determined but not very good FBI agent, she has shed most traces of her femininity in an effort to follow in the footsteps of her mother, a highly esteemed agent who died in the line of duty.
Gracie is horrified at the idea of becoming anything but "one of the boys," but pageant consultant Victor Melling ( Michael Caine) is hired by the pageant operators to turn her into a swan. Melling takes her in hand for a 48-hour transformation including a lesson in "gliding in high heels." That bit should be worth the price of admission, but critics say not really. There's more attention to the terrorist's plot than to Caine's glamor lessons, a comic situation which, the critics say, simply isn't milked, alas.
Benjamin Bratt co-stars as Gracie's colleague whose interesting Gracie is more than collegial, and Candice Bergen and William Shatner are the pageant directors. Good cast.
The hour and 45 minute long film is rated PG-13 for sexual references and a scene of violence, (let's hope it's not Caine's high heels scene.)
It is playing at Sunny Isle Theaters.
