Strangely enough, I was reminded of Director Mark Robson's breakthrough boxing film, CHAMPION (1949), when watching BEAUTIFUL. However, this ragged comic examination of what it takes to win Beauty Pageants will win no credit for first time director Sally Field.

CHAMPION began with a heartless, cruelly ambitious Kirk Douglas, observed by loyal but horrified brother Arthur Kennedy, stepping on people as he scrambled from arena to arena in quest for The Heavyweight Championship of the World, the male equivalent of the Miss America Crown in its time. There was no doubt that the tautly edited film (based on a classic short story by Ring Lardner) was a melodramatic expose of what the sport of boxing does to contestants, physically and emotionally, nor did the audience wonder what they were to think of the corrupt spectacle or of Champion Douglas.

Sally Field's BEAUTIFUL, unlike CHAMPION, takes us back to the childhood of our heroine, Mona Hibbard. A thirteen year-old, 1986 female Huck Finn (played by Jacqueline Steiger) in Naperville, Illinois, she avoids the sloven model of her mother, and the confused advances of her alcoholic step-father, to attain her dream of becoming Miss America. She earns the money to have her teeth straightened and, in time, to enroll in the Pageant Grooming Classes of Verna Chickle (Kathleen Turner). She is aided by a lonely little girlfriend Ruby, and Ruby's saintly grandmother.

For the first half hour or so, the film moves promisingly from humorous stock footage of beauty contests (under the titles) to the young womanhood of Mona (now the attractive Minnie Driver). The one misstep that Mona makes, from her point of view, is that in using well-off young men to advance her plans in county and state beauty contests, she gets knocked up. Because Miss America obviously can't be married, or have children, faithful Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) steps forward to act as the baby's mother.

Along the way, we learn that Mona is willing to commit reprehensible acts to win, including crazy gluing a flaming baton to the hand of another contestant, Ashley Carruthers (Dawn Heusser). )It is an act she has reason to later regret. Meanwhile her life becomes almost entirely managed by Ruby, as her child Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg) grows in confused awareness, much as Mona herself did earlier.

Over an hour of BEAUTIFUL is then devoted to The Big National Contest to crown "Miss America Miss," and the film comes apart in its its attempt to please all segments of the audience. Is it an expose? a semi-documentary? a character study? a story of mother-daughter bonding? or a comedy? The film tries ineptly to be all of these genre, and so fails to succeed at any of them.

The basic problem, compounded by Field's inexperienced direction and turgid editing, is that, while we understand why Mona is the person she is, we gradually lose any sympathy and all belief in her character. At age 27, when most of the action occurs, Mona has none of the creature weaknesses that we might expect, but she is almost absolutely selfish and inhumanly dedicated to a goal which doesn't seem to promise her much pleasure or satisfaction. We wonder why Ruby, and her grandmother before her, did not catch on to what a monomaniacal monster Mona is. Ruby and her grandmother are very likable, but unbelievable in our common experience.

Only unacknowledged Daughter Vanessa sees the truth and speaks out. Indeed, Little Miss Eisenberg dominates the show. (Which suggests the problem such a competent actress as Minnie Driver has).

That BEAUTIFUL turns out to be so dull is too bad. If Sally Field and Writers Guild of America approved screen play author Jon Bernstein had concentrated on the curious American phenomenon of the mother who does not claim her child in order to advance her career (or to avoid inconvenience), they might have had a compelling movie, one which did not in the end drowned in schmaltz. (Do we have any idea how many boys and girls in this country grow up thinking their mothers are their grandmothers, sisters or aunts? Now, that would be the subject for a movie!)

As it is, at the risk of enraging some, I think DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (Jann, 1999) is a much more entertaining, sharper, and in some ways truer exploration of the mystique of beauty contests. If my view is correct, the oft repeated desire of Sally Field to be liked, a very American failing, suggests a primary reason for the eventual failure of BEAUTIFUL, despite the efforts of a talented cast. She must learn the lesson taught by Ring Lardner and Mark Robson in CHAMPION. A flawed, competitive character follows type, and seldom changes into a warm human being over many years, far less in a few weeks.

Or 15 minutes at the end of a movie.

Recommended: No