Best movie of this year hands down!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Mona has a mother who doesn't care about her living with a boyfriend who cares about her even less. And yet she manages to compete in beauty pageants as a young girl. When she meets Ruby and Ruby's grandmother, she finds out what it means to be loved, and the two girls become best friends. Mona eventually moves as far from her parents as possible, ending up in Illinois.Unfortunately, Mona can't compete if she has a baby, so after she gets pregnant, she has to find a solution. It turns out Ruby raises Vanessa as her own and treats Mona as the girl's aunt.One day something happens that leaves Mona taking care of Vanessa, even though Mona, as Miss Illinois, has the big Miss American Miss pageant is coming up. Furthermore, Vanessa is a smart little girl and realizes she looks like Mona.So will Mona become Miss American Miss? Will Vanessa find out the truth? And will the truth come out in other ways? This is a wonderful movie. Mona is so selfish and self-absorbed, but she LOOKS beautiful and there is hope for her. Minnie Driver does a very good job. Colleen Rennison makes a very determined young Mona.Joey Lauren Adams is fantastic. Ruby looks cute and has this adorable voice, but she is such a warm and caring person. And I have to mention Jacqueline Steiger as young Ruby. Without those hideous glasses she was really pretty, but also the nice person who gave Mona someone to care about.Hallie Kate Eisenberg gives the kind of performance that often leads to Oscar or at least Golden Globe nominations. She and Driver are so good together. It's not exactly a loving relationship, but it is an entertaining one.The other beauty pageant contestants are even more shallow and mean than Mona, but quite entertaining, and very talented musically. We only see the finalists in the Miss American Miss talent competition, and most of the girls perform some kind of music.Yes, it's a beautiful job.

BEAUTIFUL (2000) * Minnie Driver, Joey Lauren Adams, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Leslie Stefanson, Bridgette L. Wilson, Kathleen Turner, Ali Landry, Michael McKean. (Dir: Sally Field) I wish I could say something nice about Sally Field's big screen directorial debut but through no fault of her own (except accepting this god-awful comedy/drama to do just that) the film is a complete disaster.Mona (Driver, who co-produced with her sister Kate) is a white trash young woman desperately attempting to achieve her life-long desire of becoming a beauty contestant winner of the Miss America pageant and spends the entire length of her life (and the film) in doggedly determined to do just that.Unfortunately during her quest she gets pregnant and for reasons never fully explained (except the given that she is extremely selfish) has the child raised by her long-suffering best friend, Ruby (Adams), a nurse in an old folks' home, who stands by Mona through thick and thin. Gradually little Vanessa (Eisenberg, the moppet from those Pepsi commercials), begins to put two and two together and when Ruby is suddenly thrown in jail (for murder! Yes the plotting is ridiculous; seems one of her charges was saving up on her daily meds and finally overdosed unbeknownst to Ruby) Mona is faced with her greatest challenge: facing her daughter.The film has not one shred of grace or subtlety. For example, with Vanessa as her new hurdle to overcome, what does Mona do. Get a lawyer, get a job, feed the tyke? No. She gets a camera and has the girl take candids of her for the upcoming big event and in one of the many cringe worthy moments finds herself assisting a pregnant woman's delivery in a supermarket, singing 'Wind Beneath My Wings' (!) The tone of the character is so mean-spirited that ultimately you don't care one iota if she succeeds in becoming a winner (she is so obsessed with this that nothing else matters in her life) and I actually loathed her for her displays of self-absorption and greed.It was sickening and by the film's outrageous conclusion that Mona sees the errors of her way totally rings false and feels superfluous to the rest of the film.Field, who obviously is one of our most talented actresses, should deserve better projects and one can only hope she will. As for Driver, another equally gifted actress, she had better get it into her head that there is no audience for a character that has no scruples, heart or affection for another character. If this was meant to be a black comedy then it completely misses the mark altogether.

I caught this movie the other day and I was pleasantly surprised! I will watch just about anything Minnie Driver does because, in addition to being REALLY easy on the eyes, she is also a very talented performer.In this film, Driver plays a Beauty Pageant conetstent that is driven (no pun intended) to win at all costs, even to the extent of lying about her own life and actively sabotaging the other contestants. It is difficult to talk about this film without giving away some of the surprises, so I will just have to say that this movie is entertaining even if it does end up ultimately being a "chick flick", and it might make you think about priorities in your life. 6/10

This movie was well acted, but that is the only good thing I have to say about it. It was slow and the ending was ridiculous; The message (this will give away the ending) is that it doesn't matter what choices you make the rules don't apply to you. I disagree, once you make a choice you do not get to choose the consequence. And I am sick of Hollywood trying to tell us otherwise.