Sandra Bullock's RomCom Return in the Proposal
Can Sandra Bullock Save This Conventional Comedy?
Jul 8, 2009
There's a yearning for the days when film characters simply fell in love out of a natural attraction and romance. That doesn’t seem to be allowed anymore. Instead characters are tricked, conned, two-timed and sideswiped into loving each other all in the name of tenuous gimmick plots that simply spin their wheels to an obvious conclusion.
Remember when Diane Court fell in love with Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything, not because she was hired to watch him, or forced to marry him or doing research for an investigative journalism piece, but because he pointed out a pile of broken glass on the sidewalk and warned her away from it. Or when Noah went up the ferris wheel to get a date with Allie in the Notebook. Or Rick and Ilsa? Oh Rick and Ilsa…and the list could go on forever.
The Curse of Romantic Comedy
It’s unfortunate then that The Proposal is burdened with the unfortunate task of supporting one of those plots in which two people who loath each other are forced into a relationship out of potential comic convenience, because, when it isn’t treading water in the kiddy pool of comic anti-climax there’s a real movie in there somewhere; a true romantic heart beating under the surface.
There’s a scene, as good as any could ask for, in which the prudish Margaret (Sandra Bullock) and her assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) who she has been forced into engagement with, talk, actually talk, in a bedroom, amidst the glow of the wood fireplace, and for the first time he begins to realize that she is actually a human being and, in her own special way, so does she.
It’s the first scene to reveal that the film has a pulse, that it is about real characters with real emotions in the process of real self-discovery and it’s followed by one that starts with poor Betty White in a strange eagle-like costume and ends with Bullock bumping around to a Lil John track about sweat dripping off of unmentionable places. What a predicament.
The Plot
The plot revolves around a con of the most conventional anatomy. Margaret, a stern, feared book editor in New York has been denied approval of her work visa for reasons that a better film would have at least tried to make funny and is being deported back to Canada. On a whim, she declares that her and her assistant Andrew have actually become engaged, entitling her to continue working in The U.S.
As luck would have it, Andrew’s grandma (Betty White) is celebrating her 90th birthday back at his Alaskan home, which strangely has prominent Boston landmarks looming in the background, in order to announce their engagement.
Ecstatic is both granny and Drew’s mom (Mary Steenburgen) who insist that the couple be married that very weekend at the family home, but more skeptical is dad (Craig T. Nelson) who would rather Drew run the family business back home and can’t understand why he would want to marry someone he seemed to loath so very deeply just weeks prior.
The typical antics run rampant around the town as Margaret finds out what it is like to be a family and how to dial down from being the kind of New York snob that Toby Young has gotten two bestsellers out of dissecting to a small town wholesome girl who appreciates the importance of wearing the family heirloom as part of her wedding get-up.
Missing the Point
The heart of the film is in the rediscovery scenes in which Margaret softens around the edges and realizes that despite all her power and glory, she has no notion of what it feels like to establish deep, lasting human connections: to love and laugh and really be alive. Bullock is so good in these scenes and Reynolds charming in that snide sitcom way of his that one begins to see how good The Proposal would have been if it hadn’t fallen into comedy.
By the end, the film has dropped silly slapstick and grown a true heart. It has enveloped characters, not in their comic situation, but in their true feelings, both for themselves and for one another and because they are played by good actors who could rise above this material any day, we kind of get enveloped ourselves in the film’s spell.
Verdict
So, this is a slight recommendation. The scenes that work, work well, the performances are good, there are some genuinely amusing plot twists in the third act along the way to the predictable romantic conclusion, which, in a way, is so steeped in formality that it misses the point and leaves the true romantic interest standing around the entire movie for no reason.
But after one has spent many hours watching insipid, cynical, unfunny, unbelievable romantic comedies with uninspired gimmick plots, it’s not much of a stretch to appreciate one that, if not rises above the material, at least looks around it for a moment or two. At least the viewer didn’t get stuck with What Happens in Vegas, or Failure to Launch, or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, or…and the list goes on.
