Movie Review: The Proposal

Romantic Comedies depend on one factor and one factor only: chemistry between the two leads. Think about it. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. So your romantic comedy either needs chemistry between it’s stars or apparently have Meg Ryan as the female lead. An audience wants to believe that these two people could potentially be together. In The Proposal, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds hit the mark with perfect chemistry, all the while they spend a good portion of the movie disliking one another. Just like most movies of this genre, the film is predictable and not very original, but that doesn’t really matter here. Moviegoers just want to see a good match, and Bullock and Reynolds deliver that with humor, wit, and romance.

The Proposal works because we have seen the formula before time and time again. Two people dislike each other, these people are forced to spend time together in close quarters, these people realize they really don’t dislike each other, these people come to the epiphany they love each other and should be together. It is a pretty simple formula but we enjoy seeing it time and time again. It worked for Harrison Ford and Anne Heche in Six Days, Seven Nights. It worked for Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally, and it worked in more recent films like 27 Dresses and Knocked Up. These are all different style movies, but they all share that one connection with the formula they use to tell a story.

In The Proposal, Sandra Bullock plays Margaret Tate, the head editor for a big time New York publishing company. Tate is despised by all the people who work for her in her office. This includes her assistant, Andrew (Reynolds) who is trying to work his way up the ladder in the big city publishing circuit. When Margaret learns she is facing deportation (she is Canadian) she cooks up a lie about her and Reynolds being engaged (therefore she can stay in the country, and not have to leave her job.) Margaret and Andrew then take a trip to Alaska to visit Andrew’s family where they announce their big news. The movie then takes a similar approach to Meet the Parents, where Margaret just can’t seem to fit it with Andrew’s family. Margaret and Andrew spend the majority of the film trying to convince everyone of their love, including an immigration agent who wants to send them to prison for fraud.

This romantic comedy is really just a mash-up of many other movies, but that is not a problem. The movie is funny. Reynolds dry humor contrasts well with Bullock’s sass, and together they make a great romantic comedy couple. The scene from the trailers where they are both naked and run into each other is even funnier than the trailer makes it seem. This movie has a strong supporting cast which includes Craig T. Nelson, Betty White, Mary Steenburgen, Malin Akerman, and Oscar Nunez as Ramone, who has a great running joke as a guy who works every job in this small Alaskan town. This is clearly Reynolds and Bullock’s show, but there is a nice touch of the importance of family in the making of a strong relationship. The Proposal is successful because it realizes it is a movie based upon formula, and instead of deviating from that successful formula, it embraces it, and that makes this movie really work.

Fanboyz Grade: B