Review of The Proposal (2009) by Philip S — 10 Oct 2011

Good cast. Decent RomCom premise. Colour-by-numbers execution. I like both of these actors, generally, and much of the supporting cast (esp. Nelson and Steenburgen), but this film was just too obvious.

Nothing surprised me. There were no original moments. And am I the only one who is getting tired of Betty White? Where did her resurgence come from? She was funny in Lake Pacid, but then we saw her everywhere.

Enough. And Oscar Nunez had me rolling my eyes. Someone clearly thought this guy was hilarious and decided to have him in the flick as much as possible. Nope. Bad call. Not a single thing he did was even mildly humourous.

When the film stuck to the two leads it was much stronger. Reynolds and Bullock have chemistry, but the script simply did not allow them to explore it. Margaret's "transformation" is far from believable because we have been asked to simply accept the fact that she is an evil human being.

She's aloof with her assistant and fires a guy for not doing his job. So...this makes her Satan? Ok, fine, let's buy that. How does one weekend away change that? If we knew WHY she was a bitch, and something came up to shatter that reason, we might buy it.

But there just isn't enough background to make the switch plausible or desirable (more about her family might have been useful). There's very little reason to believe Andrew would have any interest in her (unless she is one helluva kisser, which was not apparent).

The ending certainly could have been more original. Don't bother with the little clips in the credits, either. Once again, not funny. The movie didn't suck, but nor was it good. It was just...

Obvious.