The Proposal trods through territory gone over in hundreds -- and maybe even thousands -- of better love stories. Cookie-cutter characters inhabit a paper-thin plot while being helplessly propelled to a cliche climax.
Ryan Reynolds plays assistant to Sandra Bullock's demanding, uncompromising book editor. She says jump; he doesn't even ask how high. He just jumps. Visions of Anne Hathaway fawning over Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly in the much better and deeper The Devil Wears Prada will come to mind.
Then the "twist." Bullock's Margaret Tate is Canadian and because of a snafu, she is going to be deported. Nose growing to Pinocchio proportions, Tate announces that it isn't a problem. She and Reynolds as groveling assistant Andrew Paxton are secretly engaged to be married.
Andrew goes along with the scheme because he wants her to publish his book. They fly to Alaska to break it to Mom, Dad and Grandma. She's 13 years older, so the news lands with a giant thud and sets up more predictable problems.
Why couldn't I stop laughing?
Two words: Sandra Bullock. She's a one-dimensional actress playing a game of one-up with Reynolds, an actor with a similar number of dimensions. Though possessing limited talent, Bullock does have two major positives. One, she's a terrific physical comedian with outstanding timing. And, two, she has a disarming charm that makes her impossible not to like.
But the charm fuels more flaws. Her character needs more of an edge. You never buy that Bullock is as devious as the character is written. Combine her nicey-nice with Reynolds, who has the personality of a marshmallow, and add talent through Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson as the parents, and fabled Golden Girl Betty White as grandma, and the territory the film treads gets thinner.
Skilled direction by Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses) who zips from A to B to C and doesn't dawdle long enough for you to say, "Hey, wait a minute" to the blemishes, and a decent script from first-time writer Pete Chiarelli helps.
Much also is being made of the nearly 45-year-old Bullock's first nude scene. You see more nudity in some TV commercials than Bullock displays here. It's hype to sell tickets for a movie that, in spite of its defects, has enough charm to sell itself.
Easy Virtue
Easy Virtue is one of Noel Coward's lesser-known plays. It is a comedy with a dramatic flair and is an indictment of the stuffy upper-crust British life of the 1920s.
An update of the play from the 1890s to post World War I, a few nifty plot twists and an outstanding cast make this one of the more pleasant summer surprises. Jessica Biel (I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry) is Larita Whittaker, an American feminist and racecar driver, who marries Brit John Whittaker. The news doesn't sit well with his socialite mom billed only as Mrs. and played with precise perfection by Kristin Scott Thomas. Rounding out the cast is Colin Firth who does John's mostly silent, henpecked father.
Mixed into the story is a family financial crisis, expectations for both husbands, proper behavior issues and former relationships and Larita's scandalous past.
The themes are old movie news. You've seen them dozens of times. However the execution at the hands of writer/director Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) and his co-writer Sheridan Jobbins is anything but familiar.
The acting -- especially Biel's -- borders on perfection and Elliott and Jobbins change Coward's ending a bit with a nice twist that will have you debating one of two possible interpretations.
