In the almost 15 years since Sandra Bullock’s movie stardom was solidified in the 1995 romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, she has made almost two dozen movies, the bulk of them romantic comedies that have the qualities that first endeared her to audiences. She is innately intelligent—plucky, hard-working, klutzy, sweet-natured and warm, and given to kvetching, self-deprecation or brooding (depending on whether the movie is a bright rom-com or a bittersweet dramedy). She can be testy, bossy and downright mean, but can’t fool the audience for long that the nastiness is anything other than a cover-up. She is our pretty girl next door with the long, dark hair. Bullock, a latter-day June Allyson or Doris Day, above all radiates a quality that movie audiences treasure almost more than anything else in their movie stars: niceness.
All of these qualities are on display in the role of Margaret Tate, the starring part that executive producer Bullock has picked out for herself in The Proposal, her first movie in two years. The movie, dully enjoyable, joins a long list of Bullock’s previous audience pleasing romance-centric films. There is nothing remotely fresh or original in the material; in Bullock’s performance or that of her dreamboat but innocuous leading man Ryan Reynolds; or her expert supporting cast. But I suspect that audiences who adored Bullock in Two Weeks Notice, the Miss Congeniality pictures, The Lake House, et al. will fall hard for her once again and the movie, too.
Margaret is a Manhattan-based book editor who—in the words of her gay in all but sexual orientation assistant, Andrew Paxton (Reynolds) —is “allergic to pine nuts and a whole range of human emotions.” This corporate Cruella De Vil has the same effect on her staff that Streep’s Miranda Priestly had on hers in The Devil Wears Prada. But with Bullock we know it’s a sham. Here, almost from the moment the plot is revealed Margaret’s frost begins to thaw. Told by her bosses that she is about to be deported to her native Canada, losing her powerful job and status in the process, quick thinking Margaret announces that she and Andrew are engaged. After visiting an inquisitive, doubting Department of Immigration officer (played by out actor Denis O’Hare), Andrew agrees to the sham marriage because he wants to be a book editor and get his book published and with the deal in place, the couple head to his home in tiny Sitka, Alaska, for his grandmother Annie’s (Betty White) 90th-birthday celebration to announce their engagement.
Andrew, we learn, comes from money and his parents (Craig T. Nelson and Mary Steenburgen) fit the classic stereotype of many a gay man: stern, distant, disapproving father and doting mom. Grandma Annie is embarrassingly and “hilariously” frank. (White’s character is as tart as the one played by the late Estelle Getty, her former Golden Girls co-star.) Many zingers and familiar-though-audience pleasing sequences later (including a long one in which we get to see both stars nearly naked—hubba hubba), the plot puts Bullock right where the viewers want her: in the arms of her hunky, now lovestruck co-star.
Though my moviegoing companion pointed out that there is a 12-year age difference between Bullock and Reynolds (who is likeable and good-looking but not particularly memorable—except for that unbelievable body of his), The Proposal doesn’t come off as a trendy “cougar” comedy, mainly because Bullock’s age hasn’t any impact on her “nice” movie-star identity. Unlike, say the luckless Meg Ryan and Melanie Griffith—both stuck forever with confining “ditzy blonde” identities that have grown shrill with age and repetition and have forced them to seek out the surgeon’s knife to stay as young as viewers want them—Bullock’s defining girl-next-door quality has a proven long shelf life. It’s something that will help keep the march of time from fizzling out Bullock’s star for many years to come. When it comes to movie stars, nice girls do finish last.
Capers, which is the debut of writer-director Julian M. Kheel, is another comedy filled with stereotypical but welcome characters. Though it’s about as far from the big-budget, high-star wattage of The Proposal as it’s probably possible to get, this scruffy little comedy has its share of familiar laughs and some genuinely funny, eccentric moments.
Three divergent bands of petty Brooklyn neighborhood criminals—described by the racist, Mob-connected pawn broker (played by Phyllis Somerville, who played Jackie Earle Haley’s mother in Little Children) as the Moolies (a gangsta, his moll and accountant), the Sputniks (a Russian actress and her brother) and the Amateurs (two guys who seem inspired by characters from Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets and their accomplices which include a gay ninja and a tall, menacing guy) —plan to break into the pawn shop and steal the harridan’s safe.
Each of the gangs is filmed in styles reminiscent of the movies from which they’ve sprung: the Moolies in hot, bright colors a la Spike Lee and rap videos; the Sputniks in bleak black and white “neo-realist” fashion; and the Amateurs ala vintage ’70s “grindhouse” pictures (complete with scratchy negative). The alternate styles, along with some cute animation sequences that spell out the plot and a score with ’60s spy-music flair by David Poe, invigorate what might otherwise have been a very long haul, as does an enthusiastic cast. Many of the faces are familiar but lack name recognition, and Kheel manages to give each of the actors a memorable moment or line.
Heist comedies always lend themselves to a raft of wacky characters and fun, offbeat plot machinations (Welcome to Collinwood, Who’s Minding the Mint?, Small Time Crooks, Gambit, Topkapi, et al.), which just about always endears them to me; on that score, Capers can honorably take its place alongside its more high profile brethren. The film screens Saturday, June 20, at 6 p.m. at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, as part of the weeklong TBS “Just For Laughs” comedy festival. Kheel will participate in an audience discussion after the screening; visit www.siskelfilmcenter.com.
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