A girl is narrating a tale about three women: Jessica, Lynette and Candace are best friends. Jessica is considered attractive and popular with men, but is kind of dimwitted; Lynette is the intelligent one, but lonely, as she has been single for three years now; Candance has a positive personality. One evening, Jessica proclaims that she is the "beauty", while Lynette is the "brains" and Candance the "personality" of them three. Angry about these remarks, Lynette and Candance break contact with Jessica. However, they each decide to prove they are more than said labels: Jessica applies for a job as a secretary; Lynette applies to pose nude as a supermodel; while Candance decides to undergo artificial insemination and raise a baby by herself. The three make up. The girl narrator is revealed to be Candance's baby, Maddie, as she welcomes the three for a visit.
"Beauty, Brains, and Personality", alternatively also known as "Girls' Night In", is a solid, but surprisingly inconsequential film built solely on one wrong remark said by one of the three female protagonists. Despite a very good cast of the three, played well by Alexis Phillips, Tiana Tuttle and Samantha Skelton, the thin story is always a notch below their talent, never truly igniting or inspiring them to do anything more than just to be 'meagre cute'. There is no real story per se, it is more of a 'slice-of-life' film about these three characters interacting, but their dialogues are just so bland, negligible, trivial and unimportant. It is unusual how such three attractive women can be so boring in a movie. The jokes are simply not funny. They play out like a sitcom with only a handful of good moments. In the opening act, Jessica is introduced as the attractive-dumb one, lamenting about how she is worried about her skin, causing an exchange with Lynette: "Goop dries out my skin. If I have a dry skin, I'll look old. I'm not gonna go out looking old!" - "People do it all the time". Jessica also wants to borrow Lynette's apartment for her date, because Lynette's apartment "looks smart". How can an apartment look "smart"? By the appearance in the movie, one does not get the impression of it. Already this beginning shows the rather scanty foundations of the film.
The main tangle is a bit of a stretch: one could in theory accept that Jessica would proclaim that she is the "beauty" of the group (though, ironically, she is actually the least attractive woman of the three), and that Lynette is the "brains", but what does she mean when she labels Candance as the "personality" of the group? What personality? Feisty, cynical, introverted, emotional, determined...? It is unclear. Yes, she is described as someone with a sunshine smile, but what does that have to do with a personality? Moreover, why wouldn't someone with a brain have a personality? Ultimately, while one could accept that someone could be categorized as either "brain" or "beauty", the "personality" label is an intruder since it is rather vague. The three women then go out to try to prove they are more than just these labels. Lynette, the "brain", decides to try out to be a supermodel, to prove she can also be the "beauty", which makes sense. Jessica, the "beauty", decides to find a job in a high profile company, to prove she can also be the "brains". Also makes sense. But Candance's path makes no sense. She wants to become pregnant and raise the baby all by herself. Why? What does that have to do with having something more than the (vague) notion of "personality"? She is the weak link. At least there is a funny scene at the sperm bank, where Candance can't make up her mind about which of the men on the photos she wants to pick to become pregnant, so she asks the doctor: "Can I get two donors and mix them up in the test tube?" Another good comical moment with a point is when the viewers hear Jessica's answering machine: "If you are male, and you're cute, and you are looking for Jesse, you maybe in luck." Unfortunately, the rest of events are just too thin to carry the film, and thus, despite a sweet reveal of the identity of the narrator at the end, the movie rarely engages.
Grade:+
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