Beautiful (2000)

16% of critics liked it
(64 reviews)
51% of users liked it
(10,069 ratings)

Academy Award-winning actress Sally Field makes her debut as a director of a theatrical feature with this gently satiric comedy. Mona Hibbard (Minnie Driver) is a woman from a small town in Illinois who never enjoyed much of a rapport with her parents. Looking for approval and validation, Mona began… More Academy Award-winning actress Sally Field makes her debut as a director of a theatrical feature with this gently satiric comedy. Mona Hibbard (Minnie Driver) is a woman from a small town in Illinois who never enjoyed much of a rapport with her parents. Looking for approval and validation, Mona began entering local beauty pageants in her early teens; now in her early 20's, Mona is still grimly determined to one day walk away a winner as she finds herself in the early innings of the Miss American Miss competition, organized by Verna Chickle (Kathleen Turner). Somewhere along the way, Mona became a single mother; determined not to let this stand in the way of a pageant victory, Mona has persuaded her best friend Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) to raise her daughter Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg) as her own. However, Vanessa seems to have sensed that something is wrong; she feels a much greater bond with Mona than her "mother," and (like nearly everyone else), she's noticed that she looks a lot more like Mona than Ruby. Beautiful also features Kathleen Robertson, Bridgette Wilson, and Leslie Stefanson. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: PG-13, 1 hr. 52 min.
Directed By: Sally Field
Written By: Jon Bernstein
Genres: Drama, Comedy

In Theaters: Sep 29, 2000 Wide
On DVD: Feb 20, 2001
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Critic Reviews

Ted Shen, Chicago Reader
ally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get shamelessly winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg.
Emanuel Levy, Variety
Flat, witless, and sappy (a very bad combo), Sally Field's embarrassing feature directorial debut aims to say something "relevant" about American society's obsession with physical looks at the expense of "inner beauty" and moral integrity.
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
Certainly the beauty biz deserves better than the antsy and dispiriting Beautiful.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
A movie with so many inconsistencies, improbabilities, unanswered questions and unfinished characters that we have to suspend not only disbelief but also intelligence.
James Berardinelli, ReelViews
Some will argue that this review is cruel, and they may be right -- but so is being losing two hours of one's life to this inexcusably bad tripe.
Robert Horton, Film.com
This movie wants to have it both ways: to score points against beauty pageants and the cult of feminine beauty in our culture, but also to root for Mona. It doesn't work.
Nell Minow, Common Sense Media
Beautiful is just bad, sadly. Where's the plot?
Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com
An uneasy mix of broad satire, soap opera outlandishness, and movie-of-the-week sappiness.
David Noh, Film Journal International
It's treacly, plastic and shamelessly obvious, and yet, on a low-rent level, it somehow works.
Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...one of that growing genre of mainstream Hollywood shots at the main chance -- an unfunny comedy.
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena
Pior do que a direção de Sally Field, só mesmo o caráter desprezível da personagem principal: uma mulher egoísta, fútil e irritante. Ao longo do filme, eu não queria apenas que ela perdesse o concurso; queria que ela sofresse.
James Sanford, Kalamazoo Gazette
When a person is suffering deeply, Field cues you in to what they're thinking by having voices from the past echoing all around them, a technique that's more often used in cautionary drivers' ed documentaries...