Beautiful (2000)

Best movie ever!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

She acts, she sings, she models, she's a beauty queen! Minnie Driver shines in this almost perfectly wonderful film in which she plays a mother who is obsessed with pageantry but she has a secret daughter that she's been hiding and whose identity could get her disqualified from current and future contests. Her best-friend whom has been taking care of the child for a while soon becomes ill and brings the girl to meet with the beauty queen with catastrophic results. Driver is then forced to choose between her dream and her child as she weighs the consequences of her actions, as well as the relationships that matter most to her in life. It's a sweet film that will make you laugh. It kind of reminded me of Miss Congeniality with it's bubbly nature although those two films couldn't be more different. Don't miss Driver as she showcases her vocals during a contest, a foreshadowing for the pop career she issued a CD for years later?

Minnie Driver does an excellent job at this film. It's the first one that I ever saw. Mona (Minnie Driver) wanted to be Miss America Miss ever since she was twelve. Her life long friend Ruby helps her with her dresses and calms her down when she starts to panic. Though Mona has a secret. To be Miss America Miss you can't have a child but Mona did and Ruby covered for her saying the child was hers. Mona and Vanessa (her child) do not get along, but when Ruby is accused of an elder patient taking an overdose and is put in jail, Mona takes Vanessa with her to California and the two grow to be kinder to each other. Then, when Mona is a part of the top three, is admits to the world that Vanessa is Mona's daughter. The shock inspired everyone and she was named the first Miss America Miss that has a child. She uses her money to free Ruby and gives her a car. This movie is awesome. Minnie Driver does an excellent job and gets so into the character. Plus she has a great singing voice. She is really great.

This is meant to be a farcical treatment of the "Beauty Pageant" business and it succeeds rather well in that category. The most distracting aspect is that the lead and her sidekick were supposed to be late teens to barely twenty in the story, whereas the actresses who portray them were actually about thirty at the time. Mary Pickford was of course playing ingenue roles well into her forties, but that was at a time when audiences did not expect much realism from their movies. Now we do, and although both of these ladies give credible performances, the fact that they are rather too old for their parts is quite obvious.With that having been said, the character who delivers the best performance is clearly the kid, "Vanessa," brilliantly portrayed by a real life eight year old. She is the one who gives true meaning to the story, without which it would have been hopelessly banal and obnoxious.Otherwise, the "Beauty Pageant" business is presented with all the selfishness and hypocrisy it deserves. Beauty pageants are about well packaged skin, and not much else. Like with the sports shtick and the pop music racket, little boys and girls deceive themselves by the raw few who succeed, to the point where clawing their way to the top of the Christmas tree means more than being a good mom or dad. That is the message of this film, and whether it could have benefitted from more age-appropriate casting, it delivers that point.