The Great Sandra Bullock Project

I almost can’t believe I spent my “You can’t She’s All That Sandra Bullock” argument on Miss Congeniality. YOU 👏 CAN’T 👏 SHE’S-ALL-THAT 👏 SANDRA 👏 BULLOCK. See, I was even nice enough to omit a couple of claps and used hyphens instead.

Now THIS is a movie. First rewatch on this list, and totally worth it. I don’t even know where to start. Just watch it. Even if you did, watch it again, right now. I’ll wait.

This movie is visionary. It’s Mr. Robot before it was cool. There’s hacking, there’s working from home, there’s phishing and identity theft, and they invent the word “simp”. Well, Sandra does!

There’s a LOT going on in this movie.

It manages to be light-hearted and simultaneously has the darkest plot imaginable: two unsuspecting women are being harassed by Jimmy, a Croatian man.

This movie was built around a ridiculous premise that, somehow, nobody finds Sandra Bullock attractive because she’s a bit of a tomboy.

She plays a badass FBI agent that doesn’t take shit from anyone. Unfortunately, being a smart, resourceful agent is not enough. Everyone keeps ignoring her because she’s a woman, and not into making herself look pretty. AS IF SHE HAS TO TRY. That’s a plot hole, if there ever was one. You can’t She’s All That Sandra Bullock! Come on Hollywood, you should know better.

Depicted: Behind the scenes - Sandra explaining to Hugh how insufferable he is.

This movie is a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy, except for one thing - Hugh Grant somehow manages to be the most despicable person in a movie that features Donald Trump. This throws shade on the playful “will they won’t they” plot because you really start rooting for the “pls no” option.

Miss Congeniality was a masterpiece, but how does the sequel compare? It’s up there! I was afraid that they’ll just rehash the formula from the first movie, but they didn’t. They changed the formula, and it worked.

Story

After winning Miss Congeniality in the first movie, Grace became too famous for her own good. People are recognizing her everywhere, even during actual FBI actions, which results in one of them going south.

This short is a tie-in with Gravity. Some dude’s dream comes true when Sandra calls him on the phone. It’s just 5 minutes long and can’t be judged using the same criteria as the rest of the movies. But it can’t be rated lower than 10/10 because it adds additional depth and lore to the main movie. Which is freaking amazing!

This movie is not reviewable. People tried, and they failed. Commenting on the story, nitpicking the tiny technical details the movie got wrong (looking at you, Neil deGrasse Tyson), or picking the characters and their motivations apart, is missing the point.

It’s a feeling set in space, accompanied by an orchestra. It’s sad, it’s beautiful, it’s human.

And it kills off unnecessary characters quickly so that Sandra can do her magic. Sorry Clooney, it’s Sandra Bullock’s space, we are just living in it.