Miss Congeniality (2000)

(In theaters, March 2001) Sandra Bullock has always projected a girl-next-door image, even in her tougher roles, but films that have taken full advantage of that duality have been few and far between. Since Speed, her career has been filled with wrong vehicles (28 Days, Forces Of Nature), half-successes (Demolition Man) or films no one wants to discuss again (Speed 2). But she really gets to show her stuff with Miss Congeniality, as an “ugly” FBI agent forced to undergo a complete makeup in order to compete in a Beauty Pageant. Girls will love the fantasy; guys will simply drool over seeing her in Lederhosen, bikini and evening gown in a short thirty-minutes stretch. The rest of the film is paint-by-number fish-out-of-water scripting, with few surprises but sustained fun from start to end. Not bad.