The Proposal is cliché stacked on top of more cliché. Most romantic comedies are, but this one is shameless. She is a high-intensity book editor in New York City. She schedules Oprah’s guests with single phone calls. She lives in an apartment that overlooks Central Park. She is so feared at her publishing house that the employees instant message, “It’s here,” to the entire office when she arrives to work. She fires someone in the first scene to show us how heartless she can be.
He is her assistant, which means he fetches cups of coffee, or empty props that resemble Starbucks cups. He is an Alaskan country boy living in NYC to become an author. His first manuscript might be good, but he’s only an office assistant so no one reads it.
So far this collection of rom-com clichés could be describing one of, oh, two dozen films. Clichés I half expected to see, but didn’t, include the Walking Away From an Explosion And Not Turning Around to Look Trick, the Let Me Show My Vulnerability By Apologizing in a Dense Downpour Moment, or He Was Dead the Whole Movie And He Didn’t Even Know It Twist. Maybe if the movie was 10 minutes longer. She is Margaret (Sandra Bullock) — “Do you prefer Margaret or Satan’s Mistress?” someone asks. He is Andrew (Ryan Reynolds), who’s sold integrity down the river by playing slave boy to Margaret, who calls him to make “midnight Tampax runs.” He tells her, “You’re allergic to the full spectrum of human emotions.”
Margaret’s Canadian, eh, so when an immigration official starts poking around she makes Andrew marry her so she can stay in the country. Of course, an elaborate visit to Andrew’s sleepy Alaskan hometown is in order so Margaret can sell herself to her future in-laws, including Craig T. Nelson and Mary Steenburgen, who’s aged like a million bucks. Some of this might look vaguely familiar because The Proposal is uncannily similar to Bullock’s While You Were Sleeping, but this time the groom is wide awake. What follows from there includes all the other clichés: a crazy granny (Betty White), a disapproving dad, a sweet ex-girlfriend (Malin Akerman), impromptu party speeches full of ad-libbed lies, a scene of accidental nakedness, bedside tenderness, a sing-a-long (“It Takes Two”), a trite score of string plucks and false crescendos, and, in a prototypical rom-com moment, a shocking wedding confession. I’m convinced the plot was conceived by an automated computer program that simply mixes the variables into different orders — 1-2-3-4-5 might produce The Proposal while 1-2-3-5-4 creates Notting Hill.
When it’s not running on rails, The Proposal goes all batty with scenes so bizarre they’ll make you cringe. One of them has Bullock doing a painful Indian tribal dance. Another has an eagle, an eagle’s talons and a puppy — you do the math. One gag with a homely stripper started out uncomfortable, but turned more hilarious as Ramone (Oscar from The Office) showed up throughout the movie in different roles: he’s a gyrating stripper, waiter, hardware clerk and the town’s clergy. Bullock plays ice queen most of the movie until she hits that point in all of her roles where you feel real sympathy for her loneliness. She looks at the man, eyes welling up with tears, and spills the beans to everyone. It’s her trademarked gimmick, but she does it well and even 90 minutes of nonsense is kinda worth it — stress kinda. What can I say about Reynolds? He seemed like he was just along for the ride.
What I’m most curious about is how, and why, Bullock keeps accepting these roles. There’s a gifted actress waiting to burst from this menagerie of mediocrity. Yes, these films are popular, but they don’t really push her as an actress. And she can only make the same movie so many times. I fear how many times that actually might be, though.
Footnote: Watch the scene where Sandra Bullock is supposedly naked. There are some strange digital tricks going on around that cupped crotch shot. It's either a) Sandra Bullock's modesty or b) Sandra Bullock's mutated groin area. My bets on a): she didn't want to really be naked in the scene so she wore panties or a thong and then it was all digitally erased later.
