By coincidence, both movies this week involve the age-old delights and woes of meeting the in-laws.
"Easy Virtue" is Noel Coward's delicious play about genteel folks to the manor born who are shocked, shocked by the antics of an American woman who has married into the family.
"The Proposal" is almost every screwball comedy you've ever seen, not to mention much of what Hepburn and Tracy or Astaire and Rogers did together, and not remotely as good or as interesting as any of them.
In "Easy Virtue," we're in a British country house between the 20th century's world wars, an era when all that was good seemed possible, even if the Great Depression did muck things up a bit.
The Whittaker family lives in a very old and very large stone house that has seen better days. Mr. Whittaker (Colin Firth) is a man in love with restoring old motorcycles, but he is no longer in love with his wife. He looks dissolute and seems filled with regret. There's money, for sure, but he doesn't really work.
Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas) is holding on to tradition, dash it all. She believes in better days, or at least the memory of better days. There are two Whittaker daughters. Marion, the older one, is homely and suspicious. The younger child, Hilda, is starry-eyed and impressionable.
There is also a twentysomething son, John (Ben Barnes), and it's he who brings home the whirlwind who will disrupt the calm but threatening breeze that is the Whittaker household. While on the continent at the Monaco Gran Prix, he meets and marries the winner, an auto racer named Larita (Jessica Biel). Coward is telling us something about the times, an era when women who broke the mold were adored for it.
John brings Larita to the ancestral home and discovers that his love for her doesn't quite transfer to mums and the ugly sister. His father is bemused, but he doesn't judge. He is clearly intrigued by the fact that Larita is everything his wife isn't. The mechanics of motoring can be so bonding.
The movie then unreels with assurance and style. Coward is a master of the barb, and every performer in the film delivers their lines with relish. Screenwriters Stephan Elliott (who also solidly directed) and Sheridan Jobbins know when to let Coward's brilliance shine through and when to compress the action and keep things moving.
Larita is unfamiliar with the many levels of British society, especially the arrogance of the upper crust, with their casual smirks, catty remarks and imperious airs, but she's game to make the marriage work. She's also smart enough to enlist the help of Furber the genial butler (Kris Marshall).
Alas, John is blind to how toxic his family really is. He's also trapped by his upbringing. Is his love for Larita just a case of giddy glee, as carefree boy meets fascinating girl? Or is he really a man ready for the 40 or 50 years that follow that first memorable month?
Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker may seem like cliches, but both of them are characters of sincerity and depth, and we owe them our understanding. There is a lot of turmoil beneath their stiff upper quips. We discover Mr. Whittaker's dark secrets, especially what happened to the men under his command in World War I and how that has affected his heart and soul. Mrs. Whittaker has a very good reason for having wanted her son to marry within his station. We understand her reluctance to accept an American speed demon, even if we disagree with her perception.
Like Larita, "Easy Virtue" is a winner. It's beautifully acted by all and filled with Coward's rapier wit, which, because he's a creative genius, is truly inviting and never seems off-putting. We laugh at the clever lines, but we also worry about the conflicted characters.
Like the house in the film, the play is old, but unlike the moldy confines and conventions that are choking the life and love out of the Whittakers, this comedy drama is as fresh as a home that's been newly redecorated.
"The Proposal" is a 107-minute advertisement for recycling -- but only if you want to recycle good movies from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when comedy was about dialogue and character. These days we get ham-fisted gags that might have been funny the first time around, but fade after the 100th use.
The success of this unoriginal film depends on how much contrived material the audience will buy into. Sandra Bullock, delivering another cold and unbelievable performance, is Margaret, the world's meanest boss. She's a high-powered Manhattan book editor whom everybody hates. Bullock can't even play mean convincingly. Her staff identifies her as the "witch" in their instant messages, which isn't subtle and is, when you get right down to it, really stupid.
But her actual crime is that she's Canadian, and U.S. Immigration wants to deport her. So she orders her assistant, a hunky lad named Andrew, played by men's muscle and fitness magazine cover-boy Ryan Reynolds, to marry her. He needs his job, so he accepts the demand. Intriguingly -- and it's the only thing intriguing about the movie -- Reynolds actually is Canadian.
Anyway, at the meeting with the immigration guy, Margaret blabs that she and hubby are going to Alaska where his parents and extended family live. Of course, that's now where they have to go. We enter fish-out-of-water territory -- only in this case, it's a cold-fish-out-of-water.
It turns out that Andrew's family has some money. These Paxtons are some sort of Alaskan elite. He also has a former girlfriend who's still pining for him. And let's not forget the grandmother, who is yet another one of those free-spirited seniors who only thinks about sex. She's eager to touch Margaret's breasts.
The 89-year-old granny is played by Betty White, who does her best to be funny, but her character is saddled with crass dialogue. Let's face it -- in Hollywood cliche territory, senior citizens are often demeaned as vulgar, horny, loony or all three.
They are rarely flesh-and-blood people.
Andrew's parents are played by Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson, both of whom had promising acting careers at one time, especially Steenburgen -- who has a best supporting actress Oscar, for crying out loud. In this weak effort, they are reduced to being members of a kind of parental Greek Chorus.
The personable Reynolds does his best to keep up with the manic Bullock, but it's a losing race. She's so over-the-top there is no top. The fact that failed director Annie Fletcher didn't stop her bad acting is a testament to Bullock's questionable (to me) power in Hollywood. Peter Chiarelli's derivative screenplay is as formulaic as they come.
"The Proposal" falters because Bullock is exhausting to watch and drains whatever pleasure there could have been from seeing an actual romance blossom between Margaret and Andrew. Do they stay together? I'm not telling, but I will write that there's no reason to care if they do.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 23 2009 |