Film review: The Proposal

Published on Thursday 23 July 2009 18:58

THE PROPOSAL (12A) ** DIRECTED BY: ANNE FLETCHER STARRING: SANDRA BULLOCK, RYAN REYNOLDS, MARY STEENBURGEN, CRAIG T NELSON

MAINSTREAM romantic comedies are so tough to get right, and so easy to get wrong, it's no surprise the genre is overrun with insipid formulaic garbage. With recycled relationship clichs, annoying gender stereotypes and greetings-card level emotional insights, movies like The Holiday, Something's Gotta Give, Bride Wars, PS I Love You, 27 Dresses and Confessions of a Shopaholic have brought the genre into such disrepute that the heart sinks when faced with the prospect of another addition to pile. And The Proposal is certainly that.

Starring rom-com queen Sandra Bullock as a tyrannical book editor who convinces her put-upon assistant (Ryan Reynolds) to marry her in order to avoid deportation back to her homeland of Canada, you can set your clock by the plot beats that writer Pete Chiarelli and director Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses) have borrowed from every rom-com ever made. On the off chance you haven't been to the cinema in the last 25 to 30 years, it basically breaks down like this: Bullock and Reynolds hate each other at first and then they don't – except by they time they realise the latter, some spurious plot contrivance is threatening to push them apart for ever, necessitating a last-minute sprint to an airport to save the day. It wasn't exactly the greatest story ever told the first few times it appeared and it certainly hasn't been improved in this incarnation.

But it's not The Proposal's predictability that's the main problem, it's the lazy way it doesn't even try to cover up this predictability with witty jokes, believable dialogue, new set-pieces, characters who actually resonate as fully formed human beings or a fictional set-up that's even half-way credible. Yes, by making Bullock's character, Margaret Tate, a publishing executive with a fancy Manhattan office and a staff of hundreds under her, Hollywood once again demonstrates its weak grasp on reality by imagining book publishing to be as vibrant and fantastically well-remunerated a profession as the increasingly non-existent world of magazine journalism (the other go-to career option for rom-com protagonists).

With the gist of the plot already divulged in the trailer and the cynical-sounding tagline – "Here comes the bribe" – all that remains for the film to do is crib together some scenarios to propel Margaret and Andrew (Reynolds) towards their inevitable happy ending. Thus after she has coerced him into marrying her on the promise of a much-deserved promotion, they decide to fly to Alaska for the weekend so they can tell his family about their impending nuptials. Thanks to an officious immigration officer threatening to expel Margaret from the country and send Andrew to jail if he's able to prove that the marriage is a sham, they need to put on a convincing display for his relatives, which is the film's cue for some grating fish-out-of-water shenanigans as Margaret's high-flying city ways inevitably conflict with life in the great outdoors. Here, Bullock gamely pratfalls her ways through some embarrassing scenes involving her tussling with the family pooch and enduring an excruciating gal-pal bonding session with Andrew's mother (Mary Steenburgen) and 90-year-old grandma (Rose White) while being lap-danced by a local out-of-shape male stripper. Sadly Bullock can't quite conjure up the snorting charm she had in Miss Congeniality and there's none of that adorable pluckiness that made her a star in Speed.

Reynolds, meanwhile, has his own problems as he has to work through his own tedious, prodigal son backstory involving an ongoing feud with his father (Craig T Nelson) that you just know is going to be resolved in mushy fashion. Like Bullock, Reynolds can be an appealing performer, but he plays the same role over and over again and he doesn't vary things enough here to be interesting.

He and Bullock do generate some chemistry, though, and the one vaguely interesting thing the film has going for it is that nobody makes a big deal about the age difference between them. The fact that he's 12 years younger than her in real life isn't turned into a major plot point in the film. Her character's biological clock isn't on high alert, she's never referred to as a cradle-snatcher and she doesn't obsess about her lack of a husband simply because she's not 25 (or indeed 35) anymore. But a little gender equality isn't enough to make up for the rampant sexism elsewhere. Though it's never stated outright, it seems significant that Margaret only begins to warm to Andrew after she realises he comes from serious money. Sure, his rift with his father may be fuelled by his lack of interest in taking over the family business, but the fact that he has a considerable safety net and isn't just some struggling kid desperate to get his foot in the door of a publishing house because he loves literature, changes the parameters of their relationship. Once again, this is a film that implies that a successful, independent woman like Margaret isn't really a complete person until she has found a man who can look after her. At this stage in her career, Bullock deserves better than that. And so do we.