I thought for sure Sandra Bullock would crawl off onto an ice floe after the one-two movie flop punch that was Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Dangerous and The Lake House. But like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Bullock’s acting career continues to exist despite all reason and human decency.
The latest from still-acting-for-some-reason-Bullock is The Proposal, opening June 19 and co-starring Ryan Reynolds, in what I can only assume is going to be a terrible, terrible movie.
One thing the movie has going for it, though, is a great rom-com plot point: the green card marriage. If you take away Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, and probably many other details of The Proposal, you might even have a good film about immigration. With that in mind, and in mock honor of The Proposal‘s release later this month, here’s how you get from a bad immigration-themed movie to a good immigration-themed movie in three easy steps.
1. The Proposal is directed by Anne Fletcher, better known for her masterpiece Step Up. Step Up is the gripping tale of sometime-hoodlum Tyler, whose youthful antics get him sentenced to some community service at the Baltimore High School for the Arts. There, Tyler wins his way into everyone’s hearts with his street-wise dance moves and his rippling musculature. The only one not initially impressed by Tyler is schoolmaster Gordon, played by Rachel Griffiths.
2. You remember Rachel Griffiths of course. She played Brenda in Six Feet Under. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll spare you the details of that 5-season-long sob-a-thon – except to say that the series focuses on a family-run funeral home established by the late Nathaniel Fisher, played by Richard Jenkins.
3. Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Academy Award this year for his role in The Visitor, a truly wonderful film about the relationship between a burnt-out college professor and a young immigrant couple in New York. Congratulations, you are now watching a good immigration-themed movie.
For those of you out there actually looking to get amped for the premiere of The Proposal, I recommend you watch Maid in Manhattan followed by Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place: The DVD Collection in that order and you’ll probably be in about the right frame of mind.
-AS
And to make matters worse, this movie will, I presume, make light of a very real threat to our great democracy: the gaming of our immigration system by obtaining citizenship through the tried-and-true approach of engaging in a sham-marriage. Shame on you, Hollywood. And shame on you, Canada.