Beautiful Information

Beautiful is a 2000 American film directed by Sally Field (in her feature film directorial debut), starring Minnie Driver, Joey Lauren Adams, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Kathleen Robertson, and Kathleen Turner. The plot is based around becoming Miss America and the sacrifices needed for this.

Plot

Mona Hibbard (Driver) is a young woman from a troubled home who has one overarching goal: to become the winner of the Miss American Miss pageant. Her mother is an alcoholic who graduates from berating her young daughter for not doing well in kids' pageants to declaring she will not provide any money or support for Mona if she keeps competing. Fortunately for Mona, she becomes best friends with Ruby Stilwell (Adams), who joins forces with her kind-hearted grandmother to help Mona as she begins her steady rise in the beauty pageant ranks. Unfortunately for Mona, she becomes pregnant and is horrified because women with children are not eligible for the MAM crown, and she has a young daughter (Eisenberg), but Ruby selflessly agrees to raise Vanessa as her own daughter. Mona becomes colder and meaner as she gets closer to achieving her goal, whether she's sabotaging a fellow contestant Leslie Stefanson on her routine and earning a lifelong enemy of an aspiring newscaster, or pawning all of her inconveniences onto Ruby while ignoring how obvious it is that Vanessa looks exactly like her, a path that leads to her victory in the Miss Illinois pageant. When Ruby is falsely accused of euthanasia and jailed, Mona is forced to take care of Vanessa, a task she is neither good at nor happy to do as she is afraid that her MAM crown bid will be ruined; Vanessa reacts to the situation by being angry and difficult to handle. Mona heads to the MAM showcase while her old enemy thinks she has a scoop about Vanessa's parentage, but only after being coldly rejected for a last time by her own worthless mother, which leads to her implying to Vanessa that she IS the girl's mom and can't say so in public. Mona also grows up when she desperately seeks guidance from jailed Ruby, only to have Ruby finally tell her friend that she needs to start taking care of her responsibilities. Mona comes to see that the pursuit of pageant fame is empty next to taking care of her family, and finally announces when she's made the MAM Final 3 that she is Vanessa's mom and is withdrawing from the pageant. But the judges see that the crowd is 100% in her favor, and implausibly change their rules so that Mona becomes the new Miss America Miss, as her old enemy finds her "scoop" and dreams of journalistic fame are both dead. Mona finishes the film as a happy mother to her little girl, a good friend to Ruby, and someone ready to turn the page on past turmoil and start a better life to come.

Cast

• Minnie Driver as Mona Hibbard aka Miss Illinois
• Joey Lauren Adams as Ruby Stilwell
• Hallie Kate Eisenberg as Vanessa
• Kathleen Turner as Verna Chickle
• Leslie Stefanson as Joyce Parkins
• Bridgette Wilson as Miss Texas aka Lorna Larkin (former Miss Teen USA 1990)
• Kathleen Robertson as Miss Tennessee aka Wanda Love
• Michael McKean as Lance DeSalvo
• Gary Collins as Miss America Pageant Host
• Linda Hart as Nedra Hibbard
• Chuti Tiu as Miss Hawaii (former Miss Illinois 1994)
• Ali Landry as outgoing titleholder Belindy Lindbrook (former Miss USA 1996)
• Jessica Collins as Miss Lawrenceville, first runner at Miss Illinois (former Miss New York Teen USA 1988)
• Julie Condra as Miss Iowa
• Herta Ware as Clara
• Colleen Rennison as Mona, age 12
• Jacqueline Steiger as Ruby, age 12