Best Rom-Com in Years

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2009)

You know how this movie is going to end before it starts. That's the thing about genre films: they are familiar and comfortable, like that T-shirt you still have from high school. The problem with most genre films is that they are riddled with clichés. It is a rare film that manages to fulfill all the expected conventions without slipping into soupy clichés. The Proposal is that rare film. Pete Chiarelli has crafted a script that satisfies our expectations of a romantic comedy, yet by keeping the pace up and keeping the scenario fresh and active manages to avoid the pitfall of romantic comedy schmaltz.
The film follows Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock), a top editor at a publishing house in New York, whose visa has expired and is facing deportation back to Canada. Her long-suffering assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) unwittingly provides a way for her to stay in the US and keep her job. She threatens to destroy Andrew's career if he doesn't marry her – romantic, huh? In true romantic comedy form the two can barely tolerate each other at first. Yet a weekend in Alaska at Andrew's parents' place proves to be the perfect tonic for them. As they discover genuine feelings for each other, Margaret can't go through with the sham wedding and turns herself into the suspicious USCIS officer and prepares to move back to Toronto. As you might expect, Andrew flies back to New York in time to declare his true feelings for Margaret and as the saying goes, they live happily ever after.
One of the key ingredients that makes this film work is a stellar cast headed by one-time romantic comedy queen Sandra Bullock, who is back at the top of her game after a string of forgettable roles, with perhaps her most complex characterization yet. Bullock's Margaret Tate begins the film as a staid, cold-hearted editor who everyone fears and hates. Along the way as we learned more about Margaret, we discover this is truly a lonely woman whose tough façade is just that a façade, a way of coping with the life she was dealt. Bullock manages to bring out the humane side of Margaret, so that the audience ends up on her side.
As the over-worked, under-appreciated Andrew, Ryan Reynolds is instantly likable. Despite everything, Andrew is a glass half full kind of guy. Reynolds fits the role nicely and provides an excellent straight man for Bullock to play off of. I recognized Reynolds from the TV show Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place, and am glad to see that he has finally come into his own this year. I think we'll be hearing his name a lot more after the success of this film and Wolverine.
Of course no film is complete without a supporting cast and this film includes heavy hitters Craig T. Nelson and Mary Steenburgen as Andrew's parents. However, it is the indomitable Betty White as his grandmother who steals the show. White, who continues to get more funny and vivacious as the years go by, proves her comedic genius here. Some of the best moments in The Proposal belong to White. From the famous wedding dress scene where she gropes around to find Margaret's breasts amongst the overabundance of fabric, to dancing with the male stripper, to chanting in the woods Native American style, White exudes more energy than actresses half her age. All I can say is give the woman an Oscar already! The Proposal makes a valiant attempt to hearken back to the golden age of comedy when Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant ruled the silver screen. While it may not be Bringing Up Baby-good, it is certainly the best romantic comedy in recent years. This may be just the film to bring the dormant genre back. After being inundated with "bromance" comedies of late, The Proposal feels like a breath of fresh air.