I Can Kill You With My Brain

This was supposed to be a Gut Reaction Review (GRR), but I didn’t have the time to write up anything soon after seeing the movie when my thoughts could still be considered gut reactions.  Instead, here’s what I think of the movie a few days later.  Amazingly, my thoughts haven’t changed much since I walked out of the theater.

On Friday night I saw “The Proposal”, which stars Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.  The story is that the mean Canadian boss, played by Sandra Bullock, will be deported back to Canada-land unless she is married.  She then orders her executive assistant, played by Ryan Reynolds, to marry her.  In order to fool the federal investigator into believing their story, they take a weekend trip to Reynold’s home town to learn more about each other.  Craziness then ensue.

While it sounds like your typical romantic comedy, “The Proposal” isn’t.  Yes, it follows the usual flow of this style of movie, but it remains genuinely funny throughout and actually shines where other rom-coms feel forced or predictable.  One scene in particular involves some dancing in the woods and I almost rolled my eyes when it started because it felt forced.  However, by the time the scene was done I was laughing harder than I have in a theater in a while.

Sandra Bullock is simply amazing in “The Proposal”.  She’s been quite good in everything I’ve seen her in, but I have to admit I was a bit worried that she would be phoning it in with this movie.  She’s done several romantic comedies over the years and I was afraid she was going to simply go through the motions and phone it in.  I couldn’t be more wrong.  She owned this role and gave it 110%, including doing a rather long and very daring scene for her and for romantic comedies in general.  No offense to Ryan Reynolds, but this is Sandra Bullock’s movie and she owns it.  Except for Betty White.  Betty White managed to steal most of the scenes that she was in.

If you are looking for a fun date-night movie, I can’t recommend “The Proposal” enough.  It sits comfortably in the romantic comedy genre while also being different and uniquely funny enough to not feel like every other romantic comedy out there.