After all, today is April 25th. It’s an international (tumblr) holiday.
Real talk: Miss Congeniality was my favorite movie from the time I saw it (in theaters — it was my first PG-13, it was very significant) till the time I fell in love with Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous, so for about three years in my pre/adolescence. It’s another of those movies that I’ve seen so many times that every line feels like a familiar blanket. It was a significant influence on my never-filmed junior high movie-parody movie Alabama Girl. I owned the soundtrack on CD. When my friends and I held a “kid Oscars,” wherein we celebrated movies that we liked instead of movies that grown-ups liked, I represented Sandra Bullock in the “ceremony.” (Yes, this event was my idea.)
I still really love it, for the most part, and I was delighted to realize that it actually does have a cult following among people that didn’t grow up in my immediate friendgroup. (See above, April 25th the tumblr holiday.)
But in recent years, I’ve realized something very important about the movie. I didn’t just love it because it was mostly a movie about girls and I thought Sandra Bullock was cool (I didn’t have a baby crush on her, surprisingly, but I really admired her) and there were pretty dresses and wacky comedy beats. No, I loved it because I unconsciously saw something very familiar in the characters.
Your faves Grace Hart (Bullock) and Cheryl Frasier (Heather Burns) are autistic.
Full story here.