See “The Proposal” only if you are a romantic comedy kind of person. If you aren’t, this movie won’t convert you to the genre.
If you do see it, let me know if you thought Gertrude — or even Coffee Barista No. 1 — would’ve been a better match for Andrew than Margaret is.
Sandra Bullock plays Margaret so convincingly in an icy, thin-lipped, workaholic way that I could never warm up to her — even when the screenwriters played the “tragic past” card. And I don’t entirely understand why Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) did, either.
As a premise, “The Proposal” is innovative. So she doesn’t get deported back to Canada, publishing mogul Margaret blackmails her secretary, Andrew, into marrying her (he wants to be a writer, and she controls the fate of his novel). But the immigration official smells a scam, so in order to get through the upcoming interview, the faux couple decides Margaret better spend the weekend getting to know Andrew and his family at their Alaska home.
I liked Reynolds in this role; I can see why he got the Must List cover of Entertainment Weekly — but even so, his character is too broadly defined, so he’s only broadly likable. And I wanted to like Bullock, but I just couldn’t. We knew the path this movie would take from scene one, but it doesn’t take that path convincingly.
When we should get moments that make Margaret more sympathetic, we instead get Oscar from “The Office” doing an exotic dance. (Oscar Nunez plays Ramon, a role that rips off Kirk from “Gilmore Girls”: the small-town guy who does a little bit of everything. Ramon is a stripper, a shopkeeper and a priest.)
There’s also a sequence where Betty White, as Andrew’s grandma, does a tribal dance, and Margaret joins her. It shouldn’t have surfaced until the deleted scenes section of the “Proposal” DVD.
And, in the only sequence where my vague smile almost turned into giggles, Andrew and Margaret accidentally run into each other while naked. Good for Reynolds and Bullock for going all out in that scene.
I just wish the screenwriters had been more daring overall, because their strong premise resulted in a mediocre rom-com.