Ryan Reynolds should stick to fighting Wolverine & Blade
....Sandra Bullock's way meaner than those two
There's not much to say about this humdrum rom-com. It's a flaccid, joyless exercise in forced laughs with a plot that relies on two better-than-this actors trying like mad to dig any comedy at all from a scuzzy mish-mash of the 'Devil Wears Prada
', 'Green Card
' and, oh, gawd, 'Meet the Parents
'.The short version is: He's a put-upon PA working for tough, no-nonsense hard-ass bitch played by Sandra Bullock (doing her darndest to out-Meryl Ms Streep in 'Prada'). She's a Canadian working in New York publishing, and suddenly requires an even more personal service from Reynolds due to being dumb enough to go abroad whilst waiting for an American Visa. She announces that she and her PA are engaged, and blackmails him into agreeing by threatening to bulldoze his own dreams of being a book editor. So, he agrees and to prove to the non-entity immigration police guy that it's all true, she goes with Reynolds to the family home up in Alaska to celebrate his Grammy's birthday and...well...there's a cute dog in it and you nearly see Ryan Reynold's ass.
Nope, that's it - that's really it. There's so much cringeworthy crap in here that I don't really know how best to start. It's exactly as outlined above. Ryan Reynolds' character (does it MATTER what he's called? At all?) turns out to be a little rich kid who upsets the family applecart by wanting to publish instead of run the Alaskan version of Wallmart with his Daddy. So he upsets the Dad from Poltergeist
and Mary Steenburgen from Back to the Future 3
. There's a cute white dog that nearly gets eaten by an eagle. Sandra Bullock has some minor clothes-issues and forgets that she's a tough bitch from Canada (from where you think she could handle snow) and she goes all gooey when presented with Reynold's sickly sweet 'family' and their cute dog. Did I mention the cute dog? The fluffball is the main reason to watch this. There's also a grandparent who only PRETENDS to die, which is just manipulative, and rather disappointing given how annoying she is.There's no real emotion here whatsoever, just bowel-motions.
Without a single moment of real joy in the whole thing, The Proposal lumbers along at the speed of sad and produces a lacklustre feeling of basic despair and a real regret I didn't just ignore everyone's protests and put Legally Blonde
or Working Girl
on again instead!This is because I gave it a chance, and it failed to improve at any point.
I like some 'chick flicks' but 'rom-coms', such as they are, tend to suck. This does very little to change my mind. I don't 'propose' you miss this at all, I recommend you burn it, or better yet, don't ever, ever pay for this soggy waste of celluloid. I speak as someone who actually quite enjoyed 'PS I Love You
', which just proves that at least with a book adaptation, you have someone to blame and some structure that can often help. Confessions of a Shopaholic is not in this category either, btw.So....
Sandra Bullock strikes out, but I doubt she's too upset - this has earned something like $54million already....
Weird.
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