Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

'Proposal' fights off its worst excesses for something believable

My thirteen wives and four husbands are always shocked when we hear about how hard marriage is for some people.

What's so tricky about filling out a couple pages of shipping and billing information? People do it on Amazon.com every day. I used to pack things up for a living, so I understand being worried about the contents being damaged in transit, but in my experience your spouse arrives intact 95% of the time. If he arrives dinged up or a little dead, just hang onto the packing materials and they should exchange him for you.

But movies make it look like finding one person so compatible you can share a home and a life with her is a task of Sisyphean patience and Herculean effort. Whatever. One girl doesn't work out, that's why we've got landfills. You got a few bucks and love is much easier to find than you'd think watching romantic comedies like The Proposal.

Editor Sandra Bullock is so good at her job she can get reclusive authors to appear on Oprah, but her dedication to her work has run her afoul of immigration laws. Faced with deportation to Canada and the loss of her job, she blackmails assistant Ryan Reynolds into agreeing to marry her so she can stay in the country.

Federal immigration officer Denis O'Hare isn't buying it. During his interrogation, Bullock and Reynolds are forced to plan to Alaska to meet Reynolds' family, share the happy news, and try not to kill each other in the meantime.

The problem with most romantic comedies is they don't seem to exist in the real world, but in a cuter, aggravating, and frivolous one where psychotic behavior is considered free-spirited instead of jailable and every single person is so emotionally disturbed they can't tell the difference between love and hate. Yet rather than this worldwide mental illness resulting in dead puppy love notes and basements full of skinned nurses who wouldn't return their calls, it translates to a fluffy cuddle-world where malicious fighting and mutual enmity pose no obstacle to true love.

Initially, The Proposal belongs to this alternate bunnyland universe, indulging in exaggerated characterizations of Bullock as a heartless ice-bitch and in silly, obvious direction which is basically saying "Hello, audience! I think very little of your brainpower."

Then it's on to the grand comedy of faking their felonious marriage in stunning, romantic Alaska, surrounded by small-town folk and their genuine, goodhearted ways. You don't need to be told where it goes from there: your corpse is discovered slumped over a theater seat, the straw from your $6 Coke jammed through both sides of your neck.

But then something unexpected happens. Director Anne Fletcher drops the exaggeration and the forced charm. Bullock and Reynolds' pranks on each other become believable. Writer Pete Chiarelli gives his characters some real emotion and through that they start to gain some dignity. The Proposal stops being a generic, eye-rolling rom-com and becomes something honest.

It's still got some foolishness in the periphery, notably a dopey ethnic guy and the grandmother whose unquenchable lust for life can't help but bring everyone together. (A trope that seriously needs to die: 90-year-old women don't dance around the woods chanting to the Earth Mother, they sit in chairs complaining about how cold it is even after you set their afghan on fire.)

There's some sap, too, and the usual heartfelt speeches carry few surprises. But The Proposal fights off its worst excesses in favor of something simpler, better, and just about believable.

Grade: B-