Beauté criminelle

This movie started out cringe-worthy--but it was meant to, with an overbearing mother, a witch of a rival, and a hesitant beauty queen constantly coming in second. There was some goofy overacting, and a few implausible plot points (She comes in second in EVERY single competition? ALL of them?) Unfortunately, the movie suffers horribly from it's need to, well, be a TV movie. Rather than end at the ending of the movie, an amusing twist in which the killer is (semi-plausibly) revealed, the movie continues for another twenty minutes, just to make sure that justice is done. Of course, now that the killer is revealed, she suddenly undergoes a complete personality shift--her character gets completely rewritten, because the writers don't need to keep her identity secret any more. The cheese completely sinks what otherwise could have been a passably amusing movie.

A `Wacky Chick' flick. A beauty contestant winds up dead and the Usual Suspects are rounded up. Another entry in the vein of the Texas Cheerleader, this is an average example of its type.

Yasmine Bleeth turns in her usual wholesome girl performance, and Jill Clayburgh does a good job as her stressed-out slightly obsessed mom.

Some mildly funny moments listening to the vapid self-serving PR coming out of contestants' mouths. (`I'd like to own a restaurant so I can give left-over food to the homeless.')

You have to ask yourself what people are using for brains when they think a cheerleader spot or beauty crown is worth killing for!

I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be serious or not - it was too bad to be serious and not amusing enough to be funny - but I still sat down one Saturday afternoon and watched it. The worst part of all is if it came on telly again I would probably watch it.

This pageant movie definitely lives up to it's title. It is one of the premiere of campy and catty pageant movies.....and a whole lot of fun too!! It definitely is successful in it's pursuit as the tongue in cheek/drama that it is attempting to be. Yasmine Bleeth and Cassidy Rae play their roles to the hilt as catty, feuding pageant contestants. Jill Clayburg is also great as Yasmine's nutty pageant stage mother. George Eads from the TV show CSI plays the man they are feuding over. I enjoyed this film much more than a similar film entitled Beauty's Revenge which stars Cortney Thorne-Smith. With the silly Dairy Queen premise Beauty's Revenge left me "udderly" bored.

So I found myself home watching Unsolved Mysteries this morning, vegetating on the couch, and this movie comes on afterward. It as terrible!

I mean... my God. Completely awful.

If you want a funny beauty pageant movie, check out Drop Dead Gorgeous, not this second rate mediocre rip off.