“You’re Mel Gibson”: the 2000’s Sandra Bullock movie inspired by ‘Lethal Weapon’
In the 1993 movie Demolition Man, the world was introduced to an exciting new presence on the acting scene in the form of Sandra Bullock playing Lenina Huxley, a straight-laced police officer from the future who clashes with Sylvester Stallone’s John Spartan.
The movie launched Bullock into the stratosphere, helped by the fact that Speed came out the very same year. Over the next few years, she built up her repertoire to the point where she was one of the most recognisable female stars in all of Hollywood.
In the year 2000, Bullock took on a role that would help take her career to the next level. She played Gracie Hart, an FBI agent posing as a beauty queen, in Donald Petrie’s Miss Congeniality. Assigned the task of bringing down a terrorist plot, Hart must embrace her feminine side to blend in with a group of women she initially can’t stand. The film was a huge hit, proving that Bullock could stand up as a comedic lead and earned her a nomination for ‘Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy’ at the Golden Globes.
Petrie spoke to People for the 25th anniversary of the film in 2025, explaining that he came into the process late in the day. “I know they interviewed four or five other directors for the job,” he recalled, “When I read it, I must say I didn’t care for the script all that much, mainly because it was trying to spoof pageants.”
When Petrie was finally given the job, he ripped up the existing script and started work on a new idea. Instead of deriving comedy from the nature of beauty pageants, he decided to make Gracie’s seriousness the focal point. He did so by citing one of the most popular movies of the 1980s.
“When I went in and pitched, I said, ‘The movie I want to make is Lethal Weapon’,” he continued, “Sandra, you’re Mel Gibson. You’re tough as nails, shoot first, ask questions later, the FBI agent who subjugated every female bone in her body to do this man’s work in a man’s world.”
Directed by Richard Donner, Lethal Weapon perfected the ‘buddy cop’ formula in 1987. It stars Gibson as Martin Riggs, a reckless young police officer haunted by the death of his wife. His foil is Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh, an older detective who is far more straight-laced.
The two men’s differing approach to police work propels the story and drive most of the comedy. Riggs and Murtaugh’s dysfunctional relationship resonated with audiences to the point where four sequels and a spin-off TV show have been made in the years since the first movie.
In Miss Congeniality, Gracie serves as the Murtaugh stand-in while the world of pageantry is her Riggs, and it’s this juxtaposition that makes the film so enjoyable and helped make Bullock an even bigger star than she already was. Unlike Lethal Weapon, the film only got one sequel, and it’s something that Bullock would rather not talk about.
