Taglines: Sometimes you have to give up the life of your dreams, to discover the dream of your life.
Mona Hibbard (Driver) is a young woman from a troubled home who has one overarching goal: to become the winner of the Miss American Miss pageant. Her mother is an alcoholic who graduates from berating her young daughter for not doing well in kids’ pageants to declaring she will not provide any money or support for Mona if she keeps competing. Fortunately for Mona, she becomes best friends with Ruby Stilwell (Adams) and Ruby’s kind grandmother (Herta Ware) joins her sweet granddaughter to support Mona as she begins her steady rise through the beauty pageant ranks.
Mona becomes pregnant, but, as women with children are ineligible for the MAM crown, Ruby selflessly agrees to raise Mona’s daughter Vanessa (Eisenberg) as her own daughter. Mona becomes colder and meaner as she gets closer to achieving her goal, whether she’s sabotaging fellow contestant Joyce Perkins (Leslie Stefanson) on her routine and earning a lifelong enemy of an aspiring newscaster, or pawning all of her inconveniences onto Ruby while ignoring how obvious it is that Vanessa looks exactly like her – a path that leads to her victory in the Miss Illinois pageant.
When Mona goes to tell her mom about it, she fends off the mom’s gross, leering husband and is left hurt when she’d told that it would take too much effort to attend the MAM pageant, at which point Vanessa defends Mona and Mona is bitterly relieved to be ejected from the unloving home she grew up in.
Beautiful is a 2000 American comedy-drama film directed by Sally Field (in her feature film directorial debut), starring Minnie Driver, Joey Lauren Adams, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Herta Ware, and Kathleen Turner. The plot deals with the sacrifices that contestants in the Miss America pageant typically must make.
Beautiful (2000)
Directed by: Sally Field
Starring: Minnie Driver, Joey Lauren Adams, Leslie Stefanson, Bridgette Wilson, Kathleen Turner, Hallie Kate Eisenberg,
Screenplay by: Jon Bernstein
Production Design by: Charles William Breen
Cinematography by: Robert D. Yeoman
Film Editing by: Debra Neil-Fisher
Costume Design by: Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko, Tammy Williamson
Set Decoration by: Jeffrey Kushon
Art Direction by: A. Leslie Thomas
Music by: John Frizzell
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and thematic elements.
Distributed by: Destination Films
Release Date: September 29, 2000
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