Wow! Such a good movie.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Plain outsider Mona Hibbard is obsessed with beauty pageants. She pays for her own braces and classes with Verna Chickle (Kathleen Turner). She and Ruby become best friends as children. Mona (Minnie Driver)'s pageant dreams are derailed when she get pregnant. Seven years later, Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) is mother to Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg). After all, one can't be Miss America with a child. Vanessa dislikes Mona. Mona uses every trick in the book to win. When Ruby is arrested, Vanessa and Mona are left alone. Local TV reporter Joyce Parkins has an ax to grind against Mona.This is Sally Field's theatrical directorial debut. The movie struggles between its various tones. The black comedy of a driven Mona doing those crazy antics to get ahead is somewhat funny. It never fully commits to being a black comedy. It also tries to say something serious about beauty pageants. It doesn't quite work. The mother daughter relationship plays out almost exactly as expected. It even does the single clap thing at the end. I rather have the black comedy that ends with Mona walking out on the pageant.

As its title, the movie is beautiful but based upon a lot of pain and sufferings. This sadness is all the more harrowing than the entire cast is feminine, which is an amazing feat in nowadays Hollywood. As a female french writer, Simone de Beauvoir, said that "women don't birth but become so". We see that there: all the women are suffering from child to teen, adult and even third age! Their pain is closely linked with their beauty and their parents. In a way, this movie asks the following question: what is it to be a woman in America? For the answer, you can count on a truly excellent cast: the kids are very touching and they can be proud to have such a milestone at their age. Minnie Driver really carries the story on her shoulders. For me, she was a future leading actress but she seems to have disappeared since. It's a pity.I don't really understand how such a movie can be award-less ? So, if you find it, take the course!

SPOILERS THROUGH: I did not think Beautiful was bad so much as unstructured. One minute the audience was watching a rather serious drama, the next almost a spoof on pageants. I really don't think the whole pageant movie thing has become overdone yet but most movies about this subject, in my opinion, just aren't very good. Beautiful has some nice moments but by and large it's all over the place as far as genres go (drama, comedy, satire). I think it really should have stayed just a drama because the plot was interesting and the cast was good.As far as Driver's performance goes, she was convincing. The problem is that so much of what takes place is such a satire that it's almost impossible to take the serious moments seriously. The character of Mona also changes so abruptly that it is impossible not to be skeptical. Instead of so much silly satire it would have been nice if more character development of Mona had gone on. I could buy the fact that she grew and matured but more time was needed in the movie to show her transition. We don't get to see enough character development of anyone and to much time is wasted on things that have no relevance to the plot such as the scheming reporter who wants to ruin Mona's reputation. What was the point with that? It did not even fit into the storyline.The best aspect of this movie was the character of Vanessa who was played not just well, but with excellence. I really enjoyed her scenes with Mona and actually really enjoyed a rare few moments of this movie that had a whole lot of potential (it's nowhere near as Bad as many critic reviews say in my opinion and at least they didn't throw in an unconvincing romance and make the whole thing a romantic comedy to boot.) But it's like the movie gave up and decided it did not need to make a strong effort on structure and character development or something.If a bit more effort had gone into dialog, if Mona's character had been a bit more developed, if some of the silly stuff had been dropped and if Mona's and Vanessa's relationship had unfolded a bit more realistically this movie would have been quite something. As it stands it's about average.

I read one comment given by other people,said it is one of the messiest film, I don't think so ,although Mona does something we dislike ,she also felt guilty . And just like someone said before there is someone who need to give up something to fulfill their dreams.And she sticks her dream so long ,who can hold our dream like her, from the childhood till the adulthood.as chairman Mao has sail, so many deeds cry out to be done and always urgently ,time presses, ten thousand years is too long, seize the day ,seize the hour !everyone needs to utmost their best to make the dream come true!PS: I like the song very much,who can tell me the name, ,thanks a lot!