Dec 10 2008I Do Not Accept This 'Proposal' (Trailer)

I don't expect much from a Ryan Reynolds/Sandra Bullock romantic-comedy directed by 27 Dresses' Anne Fletcher (a woman apparently fixated on getting married). Bullock is a horrible boss about to get deported; Reynolds is a guy desperate to keep his job; they're forced to get married and fake domesticity; they hate each other until they fall in love. That's a concept just broad enough to ignore.

I would have let that fly as another hollow but innocent attempt at fusing romance and comedy, The Proposal, but you got greedy. What is this part where the U.S. government insists Sandra Bullock meets and wins over Ryan Reynolds family? Is this a law now? "You may get married and give her a green card, but I insist she first meets your unusual family." I believe they might check that they were co-habitating or something, but this meet the parents thing seems silly. I don't remember that being a condition in the short-lived Head of the Class spin-off, Billy. Am I missing something in this?

"Alright, you two, so you passed that parent-meeting test. But before I grant this marriage, I insist you take care of this over-sized dog for a month, just to see what happens. And after that, I'd like to see how you behave if you swapped minds and had to pretend to be the other one for a week. And then I have Fool's Gold in my Netflix queue, so let me watch that and see if it's worth sending you on a treasure-seeking adventure."

I see the screenwriter as Bugs Bunny, peeking his head out of his freshly-dug hole and puzzling over a map: "So I was on my way to Green Card but must've taken a wrong turn at What Happens in Vegas by way of The Wedding Date..."