Some movies cry out for sequels. The 2000 Sandra Bullock comedy, Miss Congeniality, was not one of them. The story of a tomboy FBI agent (Bullock) who has to go undercover at a beauty pageant, the film was a slight, mildly amusing comedy saved mostly by the presence of venerable actors Michael Caine, Candice Bergen and William Shatner hamming it up in supporting roles. Only one of them (Shatner) is on board for the witless sequel, subtitled Armed and Fabulous for no discernible reason, and the film suffers for it—among other reasons.
Bullock's agent, Gracie Hart, is famous after thwarting the sabotage of the Miss United States pageant, so she can't exactly work undercover anymore. She takes a job as the FBI's public face, which necessitates another makeover, this time at the hands of stylist Joel (Diedrich Bader). When Miss United States is kidnapped, along with pageant host Stan Fields (Shatner), Gracie is called back into action and heads to Las Vegas to take on the case.
The setup takes far longer than it should, and even once the plot is in motion, director John Pasquin and screenwriter Marc Lawrence (who wrote not only the first Miss Congeniality but also two other Bullock vehicles, Two Weeks Notice and Forces of Nature) don't seem to have a real idea what kind of story they're trying to tell. Unlike the first film, Armed and Fabulous has no romantic subplot with a pretty face like Benjamin Bratt to distract female viewers. Bratt, perhaps too busy polishing his Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Miss Congeniality to show up, gets his character dispensed with off-screen. Instead, we get Regina King as gruff agent Sam Fuller, and Armed and Fabulous turns into a sort of half-assed buddy comedy, with the newly glam Gracie clashing with the butch Fuller.
It all suffers from an overriding pointlessness: The first film, while not particularly intelligent or funny, at least had a point to make about tomboy Gracie embracing and appreciating femininity. Here, Gracie starts as a tomboy and then suddenly becomes feminine and superficial just so she can clash with Fuller. It doesn't make sense in the context of the character or the film. Bader's stereotypical gay stylist can't hold a candle to Michael Caine's more subdued performance in the original, and while Shatner makes the most of his brief screen time, there isn't nearly enough of it. Bullock is charming but clearly can't choose roles to save her life; cross your fingers we won't be subjected to Three Weeks Notice soon.