A Review of The Proposal

by Kevin Gardner

The Proposal is a romantic comedy from 2009 starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. On the surface, it is cute in a formulaic way. Two people with no real attraction or fondness for each other are forced into a situation in which they have to get married to one another, and it is only after the engagement that they fall in love. It is a predictable plot based on a well-worn trope. The movie is a lot like cotton candy: Insubstantial, but sweet and enjoyable for the moment. 

Plot

Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, a high-powered executive at a publishing company. She is so busy being successful and important that she has no time to show concern or compassion for her underlings. Ryan Reynolds plays her assistant, Andrew, who looks about ready to snap under the strain of the unreasonable demands that Margaret makes of him.

It transpires that Margaret is an immigrant from Canada who has let her visa expire. She has to find a quick way to stay in the country or she will lose her job. Andrew happens to enter a room at the right moment, although he probably thinks it's the wrong moment at the time. Much to his surprise and chagrin, Margaret grabs him by the arm and tells the immigration official that they are engaged to be married.

There is no romantic exchange of engagement rings. The titular proposal is played for laughs, with Margaret kneeling on the sidewalk as a condition of Andrew's acceptance of her terms, which is that he can keep his job if he agrees to participate in her charade. He then insists that the two of them take a weekend trip to Alaska to spend time with his quirky but lovable family as his grandmother celebrates her 90th birthday. They must keep up the artifice the whole time because the immigration official assigned to Margaret's case follows them to Alaska to test the authenticity of their relationship. Wacky hijinks ensue, and the two eventually fall in love.

Reception

Newspaper and magazine critics had lukewarm feelings about The Proposal. It maintains a rating of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. It does a little better with audiences. Out of 250,000 user-submitted reviews, 67% expressed positive feelings. Many reviews, both from professionals and amateurs, acknowledge the weakness of the predictable plot but praise the chemistry of the two leads. The supporting cast, including Betty White as Grandma Annie and Mary Steenburgen as Andrew's mother, gets a lot of praise as well. They are responsible for some genuine laughs, but beneath it all is an endearing warmth as their characters show an ingenuous willingness to embrace a new member of the family and make her feel at home. In his review, the venerable Roger Ebert said that, much like the characters in the film, he started out hating it and ended up liking it because of the cheerfulness with which it was executed.

Implications

The script was written by a man, and the film was directed by a woman. Feminist critics took issue with the sexist implications of a powerful woman having to humble herself before a man by proposing to him and ultimately subject herself to him by marrying him. 

There is also a valid argument that Margaret's threat to terminate Andrew's job if he refuses to go along with her scheme is an example of quid pro quo sexual harassment, in which an employee has to do a favor for an employer or face adverse employment action. It would be interesting to know how audiences would have reacted if the genders had been reversed and it was a male employer persuading a female employee to marry him. Nevertheless, because the female character is the powerful one, it plays against the audience's expectations in the interest of producing a comedic effect.

Of course, a movie like The Proposal is not supposed to be a documentary or serious critique but a form of escapism. However, it might be interesting to take a deeper look and examine what the implications behind The Proposal’s  premise say about society as a whole.