The story catches up with FBI agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) shortly after she successfully disarmed a threat against the Miss United States Pageant while working undercover as a contestant in Miss Congeniality. Having become a media celebrity following her heroic pageant exploits, Gracie has been spending more time lately at the salon than the shooting range, working the talk show circuit and promoting her book. When her friends, pageant winner Cheryl and emcee Stan, are kidnapped in Las Vegas, Gracie's all-out efforts to jump back into action to save them puts her at loggerheads with the FBI top brass who don't want to risk losing their mascot and fear she might not be up to the job anymore.

Why for the love of god why? I really wish studio execs would ask themselves this question every time they decide to green light a movie for a sequel. Most movies don’t need sequels or do sequels work very well with those particular movies sadly Miss Congeniality 2 happens to fall in both those categories. The reason the first movie worked was because the story was new and fresh, the characters were interesting, the plot was well defined and mostly because the movie was funny. Except for the last part because Miss Congeniality 2 could be funny at times the sequel failed because it lost the first three parts that made the original good. We are familiar with the story it’s the same tough girl goes soft routine and the characters are no different as they are basically the same rehash as before and the movie does not define a plot just felling that trumping on its laurels is enough rather than doing anything new or funny.

I wonder if Sandra Bullock feels that she has entered into a slump playing the same old characters and never really truly finding away to expand on any acting talents she has. She has been playing the same basic loveable character since 1994’s Speed and if she soon doesn’t find something more dynamic and challenging she will fade from Hollywood pretty soon. She is no longer the cute loveable go to girl as she gets older but rather the trusty old actress that you hope can find one more performance before she disappears. She does nothing in the movie that she did not do in the original but the first time around she was a lot funnier as the character had more heart. The movie is your typical afternoon fair, funny at times, unfunny at others all the while playing out the same old story you have seen before, you could easily just wait for the video.
2 stars out of 5