Miss Congeniality/Miss Détective - Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous/Miss FBI - Divinement armée

(Miss Detective) (Miss FBI - Divinely Armed)

Another article triggering some brainwave.  “For Celebrities, a Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss” in the NY Times 

And a question popped in my head: “Sandra Bullock, do I actually like any of her films?”

According to IMDB, she’s been in 44 films or series. Not a bad score.

The list of the film I liked and she was in is much much shorter, though.

- Demolition Man (just because it is very silly)

- Speed (Although a bit dated now and Keanu Reeves definitely lost some cool factor)

- While You Were Sleeping (see here for a thorough reason why)

- Crash (Although I forgot she was in there!)

- Infamous (But as I said before, I thought Catherine Keener was a much better Harper Lee)

- Miss Congeniality...

Although the reasons why I like this film are still unclear to me.

It’s the story of Gracie, an FBI agent who is not very… well graceful who must go undercover in the Miss United States beauty pageant to prevent a group from bombing the event. Silly, right? Well that’s the strength of this movie. It doesn’t look like it’s taking itself seriously. And Michael Caine… Yeah, I have a crush on Good Old Mike.

So part of the movie consists of Grace’s transformation into a Tomboy who never shaves her legs – shocker! – sort of character, to a serious beauty pageant contestant.  The makeover takes way too much time. Her love interest is meh. Some of the gags are repetitive. Most of the things are offensive… See, I have no idea why I don’t hate this film!

Anyway, she does not win any beauty award at the pageant but the Miss Congeniality title, because she’s bonded with her fellow “Misses” like no one else.

Congeniality is not a nice word. I thought it was even a derogative word  for a while(it does remind me of congenital). Although it would make sense that Gracie, ungraceful, clumsy Gracie would win a Miss Congenital award of some sort.

But it has a nice and simple translation – amabilité.

Would Miss Amabilité have worked as a title? Or Miss Aimable maybe? Anything but Not Miss Friggin Détective. I don’t know much about FBI but I know one thing: FBI people are agents – not bloody detectives. So that’s a fail to start with. Miss FBI would have made more sense – although not much more as I am not convinced there is a beauty pageant of some sort within the FBI. And yes, French beauty pageant contestants are Miss-es. They are not Mademoiselle Loire et Cher but Miss Loire et Cher, much sexier.

As for the sequel “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous” , they went a lil step further. Miss FBI - Divinement armée.
So they backtracked on their Détective thing (good, I guess, but changing the name halfway through is wrong (see Die Hard) and what is that “Divinement armée” about? How can you be “Divinely armed”? With Thor’s hammer maybe?

Anyhow, I guess the sequel is so poor they didn’t even think it was worth a brain for the title translation. I can’t really blame them.