The Proposal a Charming Cliché

There’s nothing groundbreaking about The Proposal, but with appealing leads Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, it manages to pull off a story you’ve seen before.

• The film “recycles a plot that was already old when Tracy and Hepburn were trying it out,” writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. “You see it coming,” but “as it draws closer, you don't duck out of the way, because it is so cheerfully done, you don't mind being hit by it.”

• Betsy Sharkey, in the Los Angeles Times, sees “caustic yet comfy chemistry created by its two sparring stars, who somehow make the incompatible compatible in some very amusing ways. In the end, The Proposal is just a good old-fashioned romance.”
• But in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis rejects the “cliches and stereotypes." Director Anne Fletcher “betrays no originality from behind the camera and not a hint of visual facility.”

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