Bullock takes advantage of 'Proposal'

• By JOHN WIRT
• Movie critic
• Published: Jun 19, 2009

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It’s been a long time since Sandra Bullock has been so funny on film, so in tune with a script tailor-made for her comedic and dramatic strengths. The Proposal, a romantic comedy with bite and heart, is Bullock’s most appealing performance since her breakthrough role in 1995’s While You Were Sleeping.  

Bullock finally halts a decade-plus drought that yielded such losers as 28 Days, Forces of Nature, Two If By Sea, The Net, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Speed 2: Cruise Control. She really is fabulous in The Proposal.

Bullock stars as Margaret Tate, a successful book publishing executive in New York City. Margaret rules her office like some Cold War-era dictator. Her staff dwells in fear and loathing of their imperial editor. Flying monkeys in Oz have more affection for their boss, the Wicked Witch of the West, than the cubicle-chained staff of Colden Books has for Margaret.

Office communication with Margaret is restricted to chilly, professional exchanges. She’s ever-demanding yet never complimentary. And when an underling praises her, she snaps back, “If I want your praise, I will ask for it.”

But then one day her majesty, a sleek creature in a clinging black suit and towering heels, learns that the beautiful totalitarian regime she has created is melting. Margaret is a Canadian who hasn’t paid due diligence to U.S. emigration policy. She’s in imminent danger of being deported.

Never one to let truth or law impede her, Margaret invents a fiancé. He’s none other than her much-persecuted assistant, Andrew. Of course, it takes two to tango in a good romantic comedy and Ryan Reynolds, playing Andrew, matches leading lady Bullock every step of the way.

Once Andrew agrees to play along with Margaret’s ruse, power shifts to him. Queen Margaret must descend from her throne and, at least occasionally, do her servant’s will. As set forth and delivered in Peter Chiarelli’s script, this is a recipe for delightful comedy and some genuine heart-tugging, too.

Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses) directs The Proposal with a confident comic hand. Still relatively new to directing, she makes particularly effective use of her pre-director life as a dancer and choreographer.  

As perfect as Bullock and Reynolds are together, the supporting cast more than pulls its weight. Eighty-seven-year-old actress Betty White, playing Andrew’s partly Native American grandmother, gets some of the best lines. Craig T. Nelson plays Andrew’s quickly skeptical father, Mary Steenburgen is his comparatively tolerant mother and Malin Akerman is the girl he left behind.

Bullock, toppled from her character’s place of power and cast into a foreign territory — an island in Alaska, no less — makes the most of the golden opportunity The Proposal gives her. She’s a great comic actress who also makes dramatic scenes count. But The Proposal should have ended once its story ended. Outtakes tacked onto the film’s closing credits sabotage the wonderful film that precedes them.