Stuck at the same dance, just in a different dress: The
Proposal is an astonishingly—brazenly—formulaic
romantic comedy. On this spin it’s Margaret (Sandra Bullock, an
alternative to Jennifer Aniston) as the independent (but deep down just
lonely) New York woman who first abuses and then falls in love with
Andrew (Ryan Reynolds who, incidentally, holds the distinction of
having been the male lead in the only recent romantic film that didn’t
make my boyfriend’s balls crawl up inside his stomach cavity:
Definitely, Maybe. Oops, there they went again.).
The contrived set-up is that Margaret is Andrew’s nightmarish boss,
who blackmails him into marrying her to avoid deportation to Canada.
They are then subjected to a farcical weekend at his family’s Alaskan
home, setting up the city-girl-in-the-country humor and, later, her appealingly loosened-up transformation. (Amazing how the female lead
always packs for this turning point, sneaking that one pair of flat
shoes and pants into trunks otherwise full of inappropriate pencil
skirts and Louboutin stilettos.) And it certainly doesn’t hurt the
lubrication of inevitable things when Margaret arrives to discover her
supposed victim is actually the heir to an immense family
fortune—it never, ever does.
Crucial to the romcom witches’ brew are the comedic foils: Spunky
grandmas and adorable, naughty little dogs both work nicely for this,
so here, one of each are deployed. Betty White as Grandma Annie doles
out the compulsory eccentricity and impish perverted-ness with as much
aplomb as is expected from a veteran of The Golden Girls. (But
the American Eskimo puppy? Now that was well played.) The lovely
Mary Steenburgen and (Coach!) Craig T. Nelson also show up as
Andrew’s likeable (stinking rich, but totally salt of the earth)
parents, yet there is barely an original moment in the movement of the
entire tableau.
Like any PG-13 erotica should, The Proposal hits a few of
its marks, and you may find yourself torn between your own intelligence
and the twinkle in Ryan Reynolds’ eye. There’s no real shame in
this—during illness, say, or drinking alone—but this is one film that’s
best left for such weaker moments.