December 20, 2002 | This week’s Truth in Advertising award goes to Two Weeks Notice, an exceptionally engaging romantic comedy that is being sold with an attractive rendering of Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant as classically incandescent movie stars. The ad artwork promises nothing more – but, on the other hand, nothing less – than a couple of entertaining hours in the company of two charismatic lead players as they do precisely what they’re expected to do in a movie of this sort. I’m happy to offer this consumer report: The movie more than makes good on that promise.
This is an old-fashioned, frankly formulaic star vehicle built for two, and it brings out the best, or at least the most appealing, in its pampered passengers.
Grant is perfectly typecast as George Wade, a cheerfully feckless millionaire who cracks wise with deadpan aplomb – “I thought she was going to kill me,” he says of a disapproving social activist, “and then feed me to the poor!” – while serving as the photogenic spokesperson for his family’s Manhattan-based real estate development firm. (His stodgy brother is – no surprise! — the real brains of the outfit.) And Bullock is equally comfortable in the role of Lucy Kelson, a Harvard-educated attorney and environmentalist who is too obsessed with her work to ever find Mr. Right.
These opposites start to attract when writer-director Marc Lawrence has them “meet cute” just outside the front door of Wade Corporation headquarters. George needs a new attorney and personal assistant. Usually, he selects beautiful women (and potential bedmates) with dubious legal credentials for this high-paying position. In order to placate his brother, however, George opts to break with tradition and hire someone more qualified. Someone a lot like Lucy, who wants George to refrain from razing a community center in her old Coney Island neighborhood. George agrees to preserve the landmark building – if she agrees to work for him as his right-hand person.
Unfortunately, Lucy quickly learns that the job requires 24/7 attentiveness, and entails providing fashion tips and office-supply advice to the chronically indecisive George. Even more unfortunately, her ironclad contract prevents her from quitting. One thing leads to another – predictably, yet pleasantly – and, eventually, their business relationship evolves into something warmer.
If you enjoyed the sexy-and-scrappy verve Bullock displayed in Miss Congeniality (another Marc Lawrence script), you’ll likely enjoy her similarly appealing performance here. (She has a drunk scene guaranteed to make her fans – and, yes, I count myself among that group – fall in love with her all over again.). Grant also falls back on familiar tricks, transforming ordinary dialogue into witty bon mots with meticulously timed pauses and inflections. Better still, he smartly undercuts his character’s carefree demeanor with just a hint of melancholy, much as he did in About a Boy.
To be sure, Grant is capable of more sobersided acting – he’s quite good in Michael Apted’s Extreme Measures, a seriously thrilling 1996 melodrama that didn’t find an audience until it reached cable television – but that isn’t what this movie calls for. Likewise, Bullock can easily play against her image as a brainy-but-klutzy beauty, as she did to great effect in Bronwen Hughes’ under-appreciated and widely misunderstood Forces of Nature (also written by Lawrence), another movie that relatively few people purchased tickets to see.
But Two Weeks Notice allows both actors to play to their perceived strengths. Or, to put it another way, the stars do here what, apparently, most people are most interested in seeing them do. See what I mean about truth in advertising? Short of re-titling the movie Sandra and Hugh Make Nice, there’s nothing else the ad planners could have done to be more up-front about their product.
