Movie Review: The Proposal

Four noncommercial movies are showing between this broadcast and the next, three of them unfortunately, at the same time, at almost the same hour. Tonight at 7:30, the Orpheum is showing Milk, Sean Penn's Oscar movie about Harvey Milk, the San Francisco community organizer who was doing great things until he joined the list of assassinated American heroes; half an hour later, at 8 the Alfresco series at the Brickyard 129 N. Rock Island, offers Thelma and Louise, the feminist classic with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon driving down the road in search of freedom and meeting, among other things, Brad Pitt, to no such satisfaction as you might expect; and at 8 p.m. tonight, the Blank Page gallery will show an opera movie of Billy Budd, Herman Melville's study of military justice - an opera, not the movie starring Peter Ustinov.

And finally, next Tuesday at 7:30, the Blank Page, 917 West Douglas, will show the deceptively titled Adventures of Mark Twain, the 1985 claymation feature with Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher joining Twain on a space trip to Halley's Comet, which does not claim biographical origins.

And commercially, we have a very enjoyable movie that never departs from its very generic formula in Sandra Bullock's latest romantic comedy, .

The Proposal, almost as much as the classic western Shane, seems determined to prove that the old recipes will still cook; there is almost nothing new in it, but the old stuff of It Happened One Night and its myriad followers still work when they're done in the right spirit by people who love the form.

Sandra Bullock will never be able to make herself unlikeable, anyway, her complaints as the office ogre seem to be justified by a lazy and incompetent office; I kept wondering why she hadn't replaced the whole kit and kaboodle of them before the movie even started. Anyway, who really disliked Katherine Hepburn in the Tracy-Hepburn romances? And who didn't enjoythe fact the Bullock was obviously a beauty before her makeover in Miss Congeniality? THe barbed exchange between superboss Bullock and unappreciated assistant Ryan Reynolds are all the more enjoyable because we know what the true feelings will turn out to be. I agree with the At the Movies television reviewer that the time scheme of a single weekend is unnecessarily unbelievable, but if you worry about things making sense, this whole subgenre of movie romance is not for you in the first place. It isn't for me, as a matte of fact; but I like this one because it didn't take itself so seriously.

I'm also outside the audience that loves meddlesome, cute old ladies such as Betty Whilte plays, or control-freak, well-meaning families such as Mary Steenbergen represents, or joyful family reunion movies; but I liked The Proposal in spite of all these elements.

And in case anybody is wondering about Bullock's first nude scene; it is not erotic, it is definitely nude, it shows no graphic detail, and is actually very, very funny.

There is real relaxation from a movie like The Proposal, which makes up for lacks in suspense, surprise, and novelty; it's a comfortable old shoe of a movie, with a star we like as a person as well as an actor, and I hope Bullock finally has another big hit in it. Unfortunately, it does suggest that she is doomed to this kind of material when I understand she wants to go beyond it; I hope she isn't to turn into Meg Ryan. But let's take comfort: there are a lot of people who can't do any thing as well as Sandra Bullock does The Proposal.