Nothing sexier than a good old-fashioned power imbalance
Continuing on with a series that began with 10 Things I Hate About You, this time my lovely girlfriend chose The Proposal for us to watch…
Okay, fine, I admit it. I wanted to watch this one just as much as her. When my girlfriend was searching for our next film to watch and couldn’t find What If? anywhere online, I suggested this movie when it came up as a recommendation…
(Plus, my girlfriend says she’s seen this film 8-10 times, which is insane. I don’t think I’ve seen any of my favourite films 8-10 times, and this isn't even one of her favourite films, so I’m counting this is as one of 'her' movies.)
I mostly wanted to watch The Proposal because of Sandra Bullock. I’m not a huge fan of her or anything… It’s more like I don’t get her. She’s been in like a million movies but not one of them stands out to me as being the movie that catapulted her into superstardom. I just can’t figure out how she got so famous.
(Or maybe it was that movie about the bus that couldn’t slow down? I’ve never seen that one…)
But I’m open-minded and I wanted to see if one of Sandra Bullock’s most famous rom-coms was enough to convince me of her stardom.
The first thing about this movie that struck me as extremely odd was the fact that the leads, Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, both work in the publishing industry. As in the book publishing industry. What makes this a weird choice is… how do I put this…?
So, have you heard of ‘iPhone face'? Well, instead of having faces that have certainly seen an iPhone, Bullock and Reynolds have faces that look like they have almost certainly never read a book. I can’t describe it any better than that.
Even weirder is that them working in publishing has no impact on the plot whatsoever—they could’ve been fashion designers or lawyers or corporate accountants. The two characters pretty much hate each other, and I was waiting for the moment when they both discover they love the same book, or bond over some book-ish ritual or memory.
It disappointed me when none of this happened, but even more disappointing was that they didn’t replace this moment with anything else. I have no idea why these people like—nay, love—each other by the end of the movie.
I’ll back up a bit. Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, a big-time editor at a publishing company in New York City, baby! Reynolds plays Andrew, her assistant. When Margaret, a Canadian, violates the terms of her visa renewal application, the only way she can keep her job and stay in America is to marry a citizen, so she blackmails Andrew into marrying him by telling him that unless he goes along with it, he’ll never find work in the publishing industry again, which is apparently his dream job for no reason we are ever privy to.
Sexy, right?
I get it, I get, it’s a rom-com, I’m not supposed to get hung up on the details… but damn. This such a horrendous situation for Andrew to be forced into that I half-expected this to turn into an anti-rom-com of sorts, where one side is so clearly not into the other party…
But halfway through the movie they see each other naked by accident and that’s that. They’re also forced to kiss in front of Andrew's extended family by some way too enthusiastic relatives. I mean at one point these freaks are chanting, cheering, begging, salivating for their son/grandson/cousin/nephew to passionately kiss his ‘fiancé’. I had to put all of my media literacy skills to the test to determine whether the moment was satire or not. (Verdict: it wasn’t… it was just a poorly constructed excuse to get the leads to kiss and spark their ‘romance’. Sorry, that wasn’t sarcastic enough. “““Romance”””. There, that’s better)
I know it sounds like I’m being really harsh here, but I actually had a good time watching it. Sure, some of the time I was laughing at it more than with it, but what does it matter with such a distinctly unserious movie as The Proposal.
The two leads don’t have chemistry exactly, but once they’re out of the publishing environment, they’re able to embody their roles much more believably. Together they travel to Alaska to meet Andrew’s family for his grandmother’s 90th birthday, where they plan on announcing their engagement. Of course, they have to keep the scam aspect of this to themselves, because U.S. Immigration are drooling at the notion of deporting Margaret and fining/jailing Andrew.
It turns out Andrew actually comes from a super wealthy, outdoorsy family, but he’s trying to make a name for himself by doing his own thing in New York. (Relatable, right? I’m always turning down my family’s millions whenever I pop home to my island mansion for champagne and canapés).
Bullock, a city-girl to the bone, struggles to adapt to almost every facet of this more rural lifestyle. She balks at the indignity of getting on a boat to travel to Andrew’s aforementioned island mansion home. ‘I can’t swim!’ she says. ‘Hence… the boat,’ replies Andrew. That one got a chuckle out of me. Honestly, Ryan Reynolds' loathing for his boss and the entire situation is what makes this movie as enjoyable as it is, up until a point, anyway.
Sandra Bullock is good too, but I don’t feel bad for her the way I do Andrew. She’s the one with no regard for the consequences of her actions, emotional or otherwise. The writers clearly realised that we would need to like her at some stage though, so they go with the most stunningly over-the-top choice of giving her the backstory where all of her family are dead.
She has no relatives. Zero. How did this happen? Dunno. Doesn’t matter. But you can’t be mad at her now, can you? And goddammit if it didn’t actually work me. It clearly worked on Andrew, too, because when Margaret breaks down because she’s so overwhelmed by the kindness of Andrew’s family in the face of her deception, that’s when it became clear that this wasn’t going to be an anti-rom-com like I’d hoped.
Ah, well.
In the end, this is a perfectly fine movie. I had a good time watching it. Oscar Nunez having about fifteen different jobs on the island and constantly showing up where you least expected him never got old. Betty White’s ‘heart attack’ was pretty damn funny. Sandra Bullock being too posh to climb down a ladder is iconic.
But speaking of Sandra Bullock, did I crack the case of her stardom? Again, she’s a great actress and that’s very clearly on display here. Her commitment to her role is laudable, but the movie itself is so average that I can’t believe that this movie could be considered a pinnacle of her career.
Maybe some day I’ll watch the right movie, like Demolition Man, or While You Were Sleeping, or the one about the bus and figure out precisely why she’s such a famous—
Wait, she was in Speed 2: Cruise Control!?
Never mind, I figured it out.
***
Thanks for reading my review. If you liked it, consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien
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