Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous

Directed by John Pasquin, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous follows Sandra Bullock’s Gracie Hart as she and a fellow FBI agent (Regina King’s Sam Fuller) set out to rescue old friends (Heather Burns’ Cheryl and William Shatner’s Stan) from bumbling kidnappers (Abraham Benrubi’s Lou and Nick Offerman’s Karl). Filmmaker Pasquin, armed with Marc Lawrence’s screenplay, delivers an often excessively meandering sequel that fares best in its fun and briskly-paced opening stretch, with Bullock’s predictably charming performance, when coupled with a narrative that refreshingly doesn’t feel like a total retread of the original, proving instrumental at initially luring the viewer’s interest and attention into the proceedings. (And it doesn’t hurt, either, that Pasquin elicits engaging, funny work from a solid supporting cast that also includes Ernie Hudson and Treat Williams.) The affable atmosphere persists right up until Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous progresses into a far-from-streamlined and palpably padded-out midsection rife with tiresome digressions and asides (eg a pursuit of a Dolly Parton impersonator that turns out to be Parton herself), while the tedious climax and prolonged final stretch ensure that the whole thing eventually limps to its upbeat yet long-overdue finale – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as an almost passable followup that should’ve topped out at an hour and a half (ie 115 minutes for this thing is just absurd).

** out of ****