Wags proclaim that opposites attract.
They do, to an unusual extent in “The Proposal,” directed by Anne Fletcher, written by Pete Chiarelli.
As a book editor, Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) is nationally respected. As a human being, well, that’s another story. Her staff sends out red alert texts each time she enters or exits the building. She pulls her hair back in a ponytail so tight that it makes her seem to pucker. She never smiles, she barks out orders, she’s imperious, arrogant, and she routinely humiliates staff and colleagues in public.
Her three-year long suffering dogsbody assistant, Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) puts up with her because, loathe as he is to admit it, she is a good book editor, he can learn from her and, if he survives, she can open doors for him. He seems capable and, more important, he seems good-natured enough to do so.
But when the Immigration Department denies her visa application – she’s Canadian – she shows how quick-thinking and able to think on her feet she really is. She hits on the expedient of marrying Ryan to secure her visa.
That’s when Ryan shows some initiative. Proving he’s learned a thing or two from his boss, he realizes he’s got unexpected, tremendous leverage. He negotiates a promotion to editor, the promise that she’ll publish his manuscript and, in a nice table-turning touch, forces her to propose to him down on one knee on the sidewalk outside the immigration building.
The charade involves flying to Ryan’s hometown in Alaska where they’re allegedly going to celebrate his Grandma Annie’s (the delightful Betty White) 90th birthday but actually going to announce their engagement.
What ensues is both touching and funny, not to mention surprising. It may be predictable but it’s so well done that you realize that Margaret isn’t masquerading as a cougar but – gasp! – has fallen in love.
Bullock’s Margaret is a shrew, a force of nature, a witch. She gets us to believe that she is the worst boss that’s ever lived. But she also shows a vulnerable side, which comes as a huge shock. That first fake kiss – that’s where it all happened, that unexpected bedroom confession, her ultimate act of self-sacrifice, wouldn’t have been possible, much less effective if Bullock hadn’t so perfectly played up the impenetrable aspects of her character. By the end, she wasn’t only likeable, she was adorable.
Reynolds’s Andrew is utterly convincing as a young man who’s a food chain grunt in New York but, as it happens, a Kennedy in Alaska. Their family practically owns the town, they live in the Alaska equivalent of the Kennedy Hyannis Port compound; and he resists the tremendous pressure his father, Joe (Craig T. Nelson) exerts on him to take over the family empire. The funniest scenes are when Reynolds shows he’s not a pushover, that he’s got a spine, that he is committed to making it in New York, even though it entails certain sacrifices, not least of which is his abbreviated relationship with Gertrude (Malin Akerman).
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