Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock in "The Proposal" (Touchstone). 

The Proposal

Hollywood gets a lot of grief for falling back on formulaic stories: The cop whose partner gets killed; the imperiled babysitter who flees her attacker by running upstairs rather than outside; the brainy girl whom no one recognizes as beautiful until she removes her glasses; etc. Genre movies in particular suffer from been-there-done-that syndrome, as filmmakers wrongly assume audiences will only be happy with plots closely resembling those of past hits. But in reality, a movie formula is like a cliché: There must be something to it, or it wouldn’t get repeated so often. A well-executed film can be intensely formulaic and still knock our socks off; we may see where it’s going, but we’re having too much fun to care. The Proposal is the best example of such a movie to come along in years.

Directed by choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher, The Proposal ought to be underwritten by Xerox: We all know how degraded a document can become after photocopies have been made of the photocopies made of its photocopies. Fletcher’s last romcom, the dreadful 27 Dresses, flirted with the same kind of disaster, but that film just didn’t have the advantages of her follow-up – namely, a great script, likable actors with real chemistry, and superior getaway-style location scenery that works just right in an escapist summer flick. If you’re looking for cinematic creativity or groundbreaking expressionism, The Proposal is not your movie. But you can get good cookies using cookie cutters, you know.

Sandra Bullock hasn’t done a comedy since Miss Congeniality 2 (and she hasn’t done a good comedy since Miss Congeniality 1), so it’s been a while since she’s made us laugh. But she’s game to play against type here as Margaret Tate, a high-powered Manhattan publishing doyenne whose very presence at the office sends the staff scurrying to look busy (in fact, they’re actually IMing about their shrew of a boss). Margaret is a tyrant, and she likes being feared and hated, particularly by her assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds), a competent sufferer who hopes one day to rise up and become a kindler, gentler editor on his own.

The film needs Margaret to become vulnerable, so before you can spell I-N-S our villain is nicked for deportation back to her Canadian homeland: She never bothered to fill out her visa extension forms. Moments away from being fired and escorted to the airport, Margaret comes up with a plan to marry Andrew – who really, really can’t stand her – and thus win her green card. (Andrew will be promoted if he goes along.) A weaselly Immigration officer (Denis O’Hare) doesn’t buy their story of a couple who couldn’t help falling in love, so the unhappy couple takes off to see Andrew’s family in Alaska for a quickie weekend engagement party.

If you can’t guess how the movie ends, I’d like to congratulate you on beating the odds on that whole decades-spent-in-a-coma thing. But the joys of The Proposal are in the details, particularly Reynolds’ dry wit in telling off his boss in terms we’ve all wished we could use in real life. (To become likable, Andrew tells Margaret, she’ll first have to “stop snacking on children while they sleep.”) He also manages real charm to go along with his clean-cut looks; after being the only good thing about May’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and now this, I can’t see much stopping him from becoming a name in Hollywood. Moreover, despite their 12-year age difference, he and Bullock really click – first as enemies, then as allies, and finally, begrudgingly, as a couple who can’t quite accept they might really care about each other.

The Proposal is wildly imperfect, and some of those formulaic touches sink like a stone. Why does Malin Ackerman (Watchmen) keep showing up as Andrew’s old girlfriend? Are we supposed to think they could wind up together? And what’s with Betty White as the saucy grandma? Her scene in the Alaskan woods performing some kind of bizarre nature ritual (no, I’m not kidding) is baffling, not funny. Fletcher could have pared back on the non-Margaret-and-Andrew scenes and made a tighter, more effective film. But what’s here is still pretty darn enjoyable – certainly enough so to keep this particular formula alive and kicking for several more years. 8

Erich Van Dussen is managing editor of Rochester Film Journal. You can reach him at info@rochesterfilm.com.