Rating:

That’s right, monkeys.  I’m reviewing a movie well before it comes out.  How is this possible?  It’s possible because I’m a hardened professional at this movie reviewing thing (I am a semi-professional at this movie reviewing thing), and I get paid for it and everything (I pay myself).

So, I put on my Professional Movie Reviewing Pants and ventured out into the world to see The Proposal, a run of the mill chick flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock.  However, judging from the preview, it did look fairly funny.  Take a look for yourself so I don’t have to write a summary for it:

As you can see, it’s about a hard working publishing executive who forces her assistant (Reynolds) to marry her in order to avoid being deported.  So, they go to Alaska (and who doesn’t like a movie about Alaska?).

All of the funny parts come as banter between Reynolds and Bullock, and it’s a shame that the movie doesn’t focus on expanding upon their interactions.  They didn’t have great chemistry, but they both had decent comedic timing.  Either way, and perhaps because of the former issue, they spent a lot of their time apart, interacting in non-comical ways with Reynold’s family, who have no funny lines themselves.

Mary Steenburgen, Betty White and Craig T. Nelson are in this movie for no apparent reason, because it wasn’t to be funny — but it seems like its just to add unimportant drama to Reynolds’ character.  Reynolds himself, usually a very funny actor, seemed uninspired and flat throughout the film.  Bullock hammed up her cliched “prissy woman in the rough wilderness” role to decent laughs.

One thing that was odd was the preponderance of awkward sight gags that weren’t at all funny.  A small dog being snatched by an eagle, Sandra Bullock dancing in the wilderness with Betty White to “Get Low” by Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys (a great club song which only got old four years ago), a male stripper scene starring the otherwise great Oscar Nunez from The Office — all of these simply got in the way of the story and you’re not sure why the filmmakers loved them so much.

Oscar Nunez had recurring roles as a sort of Jack-of-all-Trades in the small Alaskan town, including caterer, general store clerk, priest, and the aforementioned exotic dancer, and even with these many hats, they did not get all they could out of the multi-talented Nunez, and it simply left you wondering what he’s doing in the movie at all.

All said, it’s a heartless romantic comedy with a formulaic plot, even with the modestly unique concept it’s based upon.  The film doesn’t capitalize on its strengths and amplifies its weaknesses as pure filler.  It gets two stars simply because it’s not much worse than most of the other summer romantic comedies out there.

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