Review: The Proposal
1 star
Yes, I know it’s my own fucking fault for going to see it but for God’s sake sometimes you have to just accept it: if you take your girlfriend to see creepy-little-girl-psycho horror flick Orphan you just aren’t going to get laid.
For anyone who has seen this film advertised (and I refuse to accept there is a single person, sentient animal, or furnished table in the U.K. who has not; it’s actually everywhere) The Proposal is exactly as you expect it to be. In fact, it’s not just as you expect it to be from seeing the trailer; it actually is the trailer. When the hell did this happen? Who gave the folks who produce trailers licence to reveal literally everything that happens in a film in a succinct ninety-second mini-performance? You really gain nothing from going to see this film in the theatres: all the good jokes are in the trailer, all the required characterisation is in the trailer, and just watching the trailer instead spares you paying the best part of £10 to sit and watch a film which goes exactly where you expect it to, at the pace you expect it to, with all the jokes you already know the punchlines to.
Sitting near to us in the cinema was a girl who, and this is no exaggeration, gave a very audible response to everything that happened in the film. It was like having my own personal canned laughter track playing incessantly throughout. All the saccharine love scenes were met, to my right, with a capacious “Awwww!” Sandra Bullock throws a sassy ‘don’t mess with me’ look and she’s like “Uh oh!” Sandra Bullock falls off a boat into the sea and she gasps with shock. Genuinely, she gasped with shock. That scene, like all the scenes of note in the film, is in the bastard trailer. How can you possibly be shocked?
This got me thinking. Why do these films keep being made, and why do people keep going to see them? Well the second question answers the first, I guess: there’s demand for this trash, so the films keep getting made. Fine. But why is there demand? How can people enjoy a film which would be disgustingly predictable anyway even if it hadn’t had its entire plotline revealed in the trailer we’ve all seen?
The girl in the cinema answered my question about halfway through the film when I caught her mouthing along to a particular line, some throwaway joke about towels. This girl had seen this film before, and had clearly paid to come and see it again. Given her knowledge of the frankly forgettable dialogue she may have even seen it more than once prior to this showing. When she walked out (I noticed, on her own) as the credits rolled, I must admit to feeling a pang of sadness; a certain sympathy for her. I realised though, that this experience clearly made her genuinely very happy and as such, to an extent, I envied her. Some people just don’t demand anything more from a film than a happy ending and some easy comedy along the way, no matter how clichéd or predictable or charmless it may be. This girl was the paradigm case of the ‘easily pleased’ cinemagoer. She was not a critic, she was just a consumer absorbing some warm sentiments on a simple journey which made her feel good. People keep going to see these films, and they keep being made, because some folks - perhaps even most folk - are blessed with a lack of cynicism, and for them it's an easy way to soak up, like a sponge, some of the positive emotions which may be lacking in their lives.
On some level, I do wish I could have enjoyed The Proposal as the girl in the cinema so clearly did. But, at the end of it all, as far as I’m concerned, the film was a total pile of wank.
1 star
Yes, I know it’s my own fucking fault for going to see it but for God’s sake sometimes you have to just accept it: if you take your girlfriend to see creepy-little-girl-psycho horror flick Orphan you just aren’t going to get laid.For anyone who has seen this film advertised (and I refuse to accept there is a single person, sentient animal, or furnished table in the U.K. who has not; it’s actually everywhere) The Proposal is exactly as you expect it to be. In fact, it’s not just as you expect it to be from seeing the trailer; it actually is the trailer. When the hell did this happen? Who gave the folks who produce trailers licence to reveal literally everything that happens in a film in a succinct ninety-second mini-performance? You really gain nothing from going to see this film in the theatres: all the good jokes are in the trailer, all the required characterisation is in the trailer, and just watching the trailer instead spares you paying the best part of £10 to sit and watch a film which goes exactly where you expect it to, at the pace you expect it to, with all the jokes you already know the punchlines to.
Sitting near to us in the cinema was a girl who, and this is no exaggeration, gave a very audible response to everything that happened in the film. It was like having my own personal canned laughter track playing incessantly throughout. All the saccharine love scenes were met, to my right, with a capacious “Awwww!” Sandra Bullock throws a sassy ‘don’t mess with me’ look and she’s like “Uh oh!” Sandra Bullock falls off a boat into the sea and she gasps with shock. Genuinely, she gasped with shock. That scene, like all the scenes of note in the film, is in the bastard trailer. How can you possibly be shocked?
This got me thinking. Why do these films keep being made, and why do people keep going to see them? Well the second question answers the first, I guess: there’s demand for this trash, so the films keep getting made. Fine. But why is there demand? How can people enjoy a film which would be disgustingly predictable anyway even if it hadn’t had its entire plotline revealed in the trailer we’ve all seen?
The girl in the cinema answered my question about halfway through the film when I caught her mouthing along to a particular line, some throwaway joke about towels. This girl had seen this film before, and had clearly paid to come and see it again. Given her knowledge of the frankly forgettable dialogue she may have even seen it more than once prior to this showing. When she walked out (I noticed, on her own) as the credits rolled, I must admit to feeling a pang of sadness; a certain sympathy for her. I realised though, that this experience clearly made her genuinely very happy and as such, to an extent, I envied her. Some people just don’t demand anything more from a film than a happy ending and some easy comedy along the way, no matter how clichéd or predictable or charmless it may be. This girl was the paradigm case of the ‘easily pleased’ cinemagoer. She was not a critic, she was just a consumer absorbing some warm sentiments on a simple journey which made her feel good. People keep going to see these films, and they keep being made, because some folks - perhaps even most folk - are blessed with a lack of cynicism, and for them it's an easy way to soak up, like a sponge, some of the positive emotions which may be lacking in their lives.
On some level, I do wish I could have enjoyed The Proposal as the girl in the cinema so clearly did. But, at the end of it all, as far as I’m concerned, the film was a total pile of wank.
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