The Proposal (B-)

What a hackneyed plot! He & she hate one another, are forced to pretend they feel the opposite, go through an awkward series of misadventures, gradually discovering real love along the way. Even before "It Happened One Night," that plot goes back a long, long time.

Predictable as the bare bones are, thanks to its leads and a director who understands how to turn this into an entertaining chick flick, along with Peter Chiarelli's clever fleshing out the interim sequences with relatively fresh dialog, the movie satisfies for its swiftly moving 110-minutes. Not much suspense here, but the trappings - including Oliver Stapleton's stunning camerawork (for Alaskan location shots and attractive close-ups) backed by Aaron Zigman's appropriate mix of appropriate richness (for atmospheric on location scenes and romantic moments) are an added plus.

Anne Fletcher moves her characters at a good pace, throwing in nice distractions along the way to de-emphasize the ordinariness of the plot, while Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds follow her trail with a charismatic sense for romantic comedy and one another - she as a Prada-type bitch who turns into a pragmatically operating romantic, finally a loving woman; and he - more ambitiously in control as the film takes him from an administrative office climber to - well, you've seen Clark Gable go the distance with Ms. Colbert, from crass news hound to lover. You've got it all here, updated in sexual frankness and a modern sense of time & place. Women who will find plenty of female touches will enjoy it thoroughly; the rest of us it's worth a few hours in the dark if there's nothing else to please.