The Proposal: So It Turns Out Ryan Reynolds is Not That Great an Actor

I volunteered to review The Proposal while still basking in the afterglow of Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds,  I’d decided, could do no wrong. If he was in a movie, the movie was worth seeing.

This was, I should note, before I looked him up and remembered Adventureland.  Or Van Wilder. Or Just Friends. To be honest, I hadn’t really realized Ryan Reynolds had had a film career prior to May 2009. Nor that there was a reason I had never paid attention to him before: because Ryan Reynolds movies, as a general rule, suck.

The plot of The Proposal is standard rom-com fare: A high-powered New York career woman, this time played by Sandara Bullock, finds out she’s about to be deported to her home nation of Canada, so she blackmails/bribes her assistant (the aforementioned Mr. Reynolds) into marrying her. Seconds later, the INS is already on her case, and the new “couple” has no choice but to head to his hometown in Alaska and lie to his entire family, including his 90-year-old grandmother (played by Betty White!),  and participate in a sham wedding. Hey, these things happen. Admit it, you personally know at least four couples who got together that way.

Formula movies like this can be fun, if they’re done well. The Proposal gets it about halfway there. But it’s in desperate need of a stronger male lead. Two Weeks Notice worked because Hugh Grant  was of an equal caliber to Sandra Bullock, talent-wise. Miss Congeniality worked because the romance was secondary to the main plot, which consisted of Sandra Bullock being awesome and funny in a variety of fabulous outfits (and because Benjamin Bratt is a capable actor who could keep up with her).

But The Proposal has many, many flaws. It’s about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, for one thing. For another, there’s no evident chemistry between the leads until we’re more than a third of the way into the movie. For the first half hour, these characters give every appearance of genuinely disliking each other. Not in that “They spar, but only because they haven’t realized yet that they’ve been in love all along” romantic comedy trope. No, these two people have been barely tolerating each other, for professional reasons only, for the entire three years that they’re supposed to have worked together. When the movie’s plot contrivances arrange for them to share an awkward kiss, we finally witness the first teeny tiny sparks between them. And apparently, that’s all the foundation needed to set up 108 minutes of mildly-funny not-at-all-romantic romantic comedy. In fact, at one point the Reynolds’ character’s pretty, sweet high school girlfriend shows up, and they were so cute together that for a second I forgot what genre of movie I was watching and I thought, “Oh, maybe he’ll wind up with her.”

Bless her heart, though, Sandra Bullock takes this not-good-enough-for-her movie and works it. Or, at least, she tries to. She digs down deep into this two-dimensional-at-best character and pulls out every shred of complexity she can muster. Which almost, sadly, works to the movie’s disadvantage, because when you put her up there next to Ryan Reynolds it makes it that much more obvious that he’s just standing there reading his lines and endeavoring to build up his leading-man cred.

And by the way, yes, Sandra Bullock is 12 years older than Ryan Reynolds. Fortunately, the movie, which happens to have been directed by a woman,  doesn’t really play that aspect up much. You can’t help but notice it, and it’s clear that the characters are well aware of it too, but it’s accepted, much as it would’ve been if the genders had been reversed. And there aren’t any old lady jokes (in fact, the only age joke is made by Betty White, who is of course the one person who can get away with it).

The movie feels like a hodgepodge of various ideas that probably sounded great when they were pitching it to the studio execs but that don’t necessarily blend all that well. There are random speedboat chases and scenes in which eagles attempt to eat small dogs. Oscar Nuñez is around a lot, and is funny, but not quite as funny as he’s trying to be. The movie’s also got more nudity than you expect from your average PG-13 romantic comedy, and I kind of wonder if that was in there due to the 44-year-old Ms. Bullock’s wanting to show off her still-rockin bod. (Because, yowza.)

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it’s 2009 and it’s harder now than it used to be to accept romantic comedies about people abusing the legal benefits of marriage that happen to be available to them because they happen to be straight. (Because, yeah, entertainment industry, I’m not sure how much longer you can keep getting away with these plot devices before you encounter some sizeable backlash. I mean, thanks for Prop 8 the Musical,  it was funny. But that doesn’t mean you’ve done your part. If you’re going to keep making movies like this, at least throw us a bone and explicitly reference the absurdity of our country’s random and cruel decisions regarding the legal recognition of marriage, OK?)

Whoops, sorry, some bitterness leaked out there. But regardless, I can’t think of any particular reason to recommend The Proposal, unless you’re a hardcore Sandra Bullock fan, in which case you’re probably already seen it by now. Or if you’re dying to see the New Moon trailer (which I totally was), you can head to YouTube for that. If you’re just mildly curious, don’t worry, The Proposal will be rerunning constantly on TNT in a few years, so just be patient.

I’ll definitely be lining up to see Deadpool, though. Who’s with me?