BEFORE: I spent all day yesterday working at the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival - yes, that's a real thing. Three programs of films, mostly about the country's time as a war zone during the 1990's, I guess it's important that we never forget about this. But I of course was in the theater lobby and the office, and I got to listen to a 90-minute loop of Bosnian music over and over on a loop. Yeah, I kind of never want to hear Bosnian music ever again, sorry. But it was a solid shift with hours and I need the money, so I just tried to be as helpful as I could to assist with the screenings. Next week it will be other events, that's how it goes.
Joey Lauren Adams carries over from "The Program".
FOLLOW UP TO: "Miss Firecracker" (Movie #3,888)
THE PLOT: Mona sacrifices everything, including family, in pursuit of a beauty pageant victory. Her friend Ruby helps her to an amazing degree.
AFTER: See, I didn't even know the main character here had a daughter, that's kind of a central plot point. Mona can't qualify to be a pageant queen if she's a mother (or caregiver, whatever that distinction means) and I'm sure that's for some weird moral reason, like they want the contestants to project virginity or high moral values - or it's for legal reasons, like if the new MIss American Miss is going to be out on the road for the next year making appearances, the organization needs to know that there's not someone depending on her to feed them and take care of them, or something.
But Mona DOES have a daughter, which also makes this film perfect for the two weeks leading up to Mother's Day, I'm on high alert for this topic, but this one wasn't planned by me - again we see that the linking system has a mind of its own and knows how to suggest films that are on topic. I don't know exactly how someone can allow their best friend to masquerade as their daughter's mother for YEARS while they pursue their beauty pageant dream, but that's where we find ourselves today. The last film I watched about beauty pageants was "Miss Firecracker", and that was sort of thematically the same, women entering pageants to try and escape their dreary lives - is that what we all think, that nobody is doing pageants because they LIKE them, it's all just a giant con game so a lucky few people can get ahead, win a title and then - what, get endorsement deals or be famous or break into acting or modeling or something?
The suggestion here is that everyone involved is very fakey, from the minor pageant directors who are swindling hopefuls out of money to take classes in dance or movement or hand-waving to the state winners who go to the national finals and all have phony bios and capped teeth and B.S. talent routines and memorized B.S. answers to interview questions and also will stop at nothing to make their competitors look awful. Umm, OK, I'm willing to roll with that, but surely there must be some contestants who are the real deal and act genuine - maybe not, I don't know.
The other suggestion seems to be that pageant contestants are extremely insecure and in need of some validation, that this is somehow their motivation for entering beauty competitions, and in Mona's specific case, there's also a suggestion that this might stem from some form of sexual abuse from her stepfather, and really, this comedy suddenly isn't so funny when you start connecting those dots, then it's just kind of sad. Like, I'm sure that pageants do have a dark side to them but I'm not sure this scenario gets it right. Clearly there's also a rift between Mona and her mother, which also might be traced back to the stepfather, but to the point where Mona's mother won't go with her to the M.A.M. pageant, and yet Mona keeps persisting in asking her.
Another thing that isn't really funny is Ruby, who works taking care of elderly people, being accused of killing one with an overdose of medication. We the audience know that the woman committed suicide, but that's also a serious issue and therefore not very funny, also someone being jailed for murder when they're innocent isn't exactly hilarious either. So how did someone somehow forget that comedies are supposed to be, you know, funny? What's weirder is that this was directed by Sally Field, who you'd think would know something about comedy, having starred in many of them.
Sure, the end goal of Mona realizing that she needs to grow up and be a mother to her own daughter is an important one, but the film takes such a roundabout way of getting there, with the murder trial, the pageant sabotages and the constant hiding of the truth about who Vanessa's parent is, there's plenty of bad behavior to go around, and I wish just some of it had been funnier, or at least more fun. Beauty pageants might be very outdated, archaic and perhaps they should even go the way of the dinosaur, but for very different reasons than the ones on display here - just my opinion. But this film is 24 years old, maybe these reasons were valid back at the turn of the millennium, and/or this film was way ahead of its time, who can say?
Also starring Minnie Driver (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Hallie Eisenberg (last seen in "Bicentennial Man"), Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Leslie Stefanson (last seen in "The Hunted"), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Kathleen Robertson (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden"), Michael McKean (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Gary Collins (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Linda Hart (last seen in "The Best of Times"), Brent Briscoe (last seen in "Term Life"), Colleen Rennison (last seen in "Unforgettable"), Jacqueline Steiger (last seen in "Matilda"), Sylvia Short (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Herta Ware (last seen in "Species"), Ali Landry, Robin Bobeau, Chuti Tiu (last seen in "The Internship"), Samantha Harris (last seen in "Baywatch"), Dawn Forrester, Julie Condra (last seen in "Nixon"), Jessica Collins (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Deborah Kellner (ditto), Brent Huff, Charles Dougherty, Shawn Christian (last seen in "Meet Dave"), Irene Roseen (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"),Robert Phelps (ditto), Alexander Folk, Landry Allbright (last seen in "Con Air"), Lorna Scott (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Earl Schuman (last seen in "Mr. Deeds"), Mary E. Thompson, Rosine "Ace" Hatem, Jordan Lund (last seen in "Alex & Emma"), Warren Munson (last seen in "Down with Love"), Ben Bode (last seen in "Let Me In"), Greg Bronson, Brittany Crutchfield, Daniel Dehring.
RATING: 4 out of 10 call-in votes
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