Fletcher: The Proposal (2009)

A totally insane romantic comedy, The Proposal is about what happens when a corporate witch, played by Sandra Bullock, forces her emasculated intern, played by Ryan Reynolds, to marry her in order to avoid deportation to Canada. Most of the film takes place over a single weekend, at Reynolds’ family home in Alaska, where it aims for something like the cosy, big-house romantic comedies of yore. However, that also makes it feel as if Canada has already intervened, or Bullock has already returned from deportation, giving their blooming romance an intense, inescapable inevitability. Much like working in a corporate environment, as soon as the psychotic premise has been established, everyone takes it dead seriously, especially Reynolds, who acts like he’s going for an Oscar, declaring his emerging love for Bullock with such creepy conviction that only the most residual implausibility lingers around the fringes of their courtship. By the end, they’ve both simply learned to believe what they need to believe for the marriage to work, for her to remain in New York as CEO, and for him to get the promotion he’s been promised in return. And, taking its cues from their relationship, the film doesn’t labour for your credulity so much as demand that you demonstrate your own labour through credulity, eviscerating itself as it proceeds, until it’s nothing more than a series of hierarchies and power differentials, a romcom with all the ritualistic sexism and none of the romance. Perhaps that’s why it feels so fetishistic, and so often approaches sado-masochism – at heart, it’s really nothing more than a mildly unlikeable businesswoman being ritually humiliated by all the men in her life, backed by the Alaskan landed gentry – a war movie, really – but it’s so wrapped up in its romcom mission statement that you only really notice its perversions at the most fleeting, unlikely moments. Of course, over the last decade, romcoms have had to adapt to a new professional climate, a new kind of work-life balance. But The Proposal isn’t merely a manifesto for workplace romantic comedy, it’s a manifesto for workplace pornography, aimed at anyone who fantasises about turning up at the office each morning to see everyone beneath them being put firmly in their place and, what’s more, getting off on it.