Miss Congeniality 2

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (Director: John Pasquin)

Pasquin is a TV vet, and he did a lot of Tim Allen projects including "Home Improvement," The Santa Clause, Jungle 2 Jungle, and Joe Somebody.

Sigh. The past couple of weeks have been nothing but sequels and remakes, and they've had the strong whiff of pointlessness. I know that the first film hit the $100 million mark back in 2000, but how many people actually bring it up in everyday conversation, like, "Wow, I wish I could see more adventures of Gracie Hart." I will say, personally, that since I've actually (somewhat) met the star--watch out, name dropping--Sandra Bullock back in 1998 in--watch out, locale dropping--Montreal, that she'll always have a special place for me when I watch one of her movies...but that doesn't make them great movies by any stretch, and geez, couldn't she have stayed around for dinner instead of hastily exiting in order to catch a plane to finish one last scene for Forces of Nature? I mean, couldn't she?

Let's go way back to 2000, where FBI agent Gracie Hart (Bullock) has thwarted an attempt to bomb the Miss United States Pageant (yeah, that's the name--trademark issues and movies make nonexistent bedfellows). The success has made Hart a sort of celebrity, and unfortunately that means it's tough for her to do undercover work anymore--in fact, I believe that once an undercover agent is exposed on TV they can't do it anymore, but that's an issue the movie skirts in the opening scene, where Hart and crew try to foil a bank robbery, and it goes horribly wrong when an overzealous fan keeps pointing and yelling, "Hey, you're Gracie Hart!" And we also find out she's broken up with her boyfriend Eric Matthews (I guess a movie is too low for Benjamin Bratt to appear). Things don't get entirely great when the reigning Miss U.S. and personal friend Cheryl (Heather Burns) and Pageant director Stan Fields (William Shatner) get kidnapped and Hart has to go to Las Vegas to rescue them.

Joining the team is mad black woman Sam Fuller (Regina King), in an all-too-familiar same-sex interracial friendship "love story" covered by this week's Guess Who. They hate each other but then stuff happens where they want to work with each other and so on. Helping out with her ruses is necessarily-gay Joel (Diedrich Bader), who is the best part of the movie. Also on the job is Vegas field agent Jeff Foreman (Enrique Murciano, who was in Speed 2) who is an ineffectual nothing around his boss Collins (Treat Williams) and his girlfriend (or is she?) Janet ("Law & Order" vet Elisabeth Rohm). Once Hart gets a clue about a Dolly Parton look-a-like that may have been involved with the kidnapping, and tackles the real Dolly Parton (in a shameless recurring joke from the original involving out-of-line tackling), Collins wants Hart and Fuller out of the picture. Of course, this is a staple of these types of films--rogue agents continuing cases when they are barred from doing so.

The movie (like the first) is completely aimed at chicks, with long-time Bullock collaborater Marc Lawrence (Two Weeks Notice, Forces of Nature, and both Congeniality films) writing the screenplay. Women are basically men, and vice-versa, in this world. There's a lot of for-females-only type of facial expressions and line-readings, and Bullock is quite a talented comedienne, but this is strictly for the sistas. This is the type of movie I imagine is constructed from pieces of girl conversation on a front porch drinking margaritas amid lots of "you go girls." It's not as militant as I make it sound from that, it's just something I'm surprised a man wrote, or was involved with at all.

I just can't wait for Sin City, is all I'm saying.