Director: Marc Lawrence
Cast:
Mike Piazza, Dorian Missick, Lainie Bernhardt, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock
Duration: 100 minutes
Hollywood romantic comedies have never been known for their original plot-lines, but have always been tremendously successful in good ol' Blighty (particularly around Valentine's Day when this was out in the cinemas). Audiences are instantly captivated when they discover that the two leads, usually total opposites, are hopelessly attracted to each other, like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall and like Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan (who had the market cornered on this particular genre at one time) in When Harry Met Sally. Love is the one thing that most any person on this earth can relate to and movies about them, comedic or not, are very touching and can get the best of us. With the success of the genre, there’s really no end in sight as people continue to fall in love, even when they don’t know it. So with this latest entry into the screwball comedy market, can Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock pull it off? You bet.
Grant plays industrial tycoon George Wade. A Donald Trump clone (who has a cameo in the film, by the way) who makes his living, along with his brother, by tearing down old parts of New York to build new flats. Enter Lucy Kelson (Sandra Bullock), daughter of two lawyers and a graduate of Harvard Law School. Lucy is always trying to make a statement, not motivated by materialistic needs, she has the freedom to do so at her leisure. As fate would have it, George has just let his latest lawyer go and is on the lookout for a new one. After a less than stellar interview session, he literally bumps into Lucy who is trying to convince him not to tear down a local theatre near her childhood home. Taken with her, he hires her as his solicitor and all is well. But not for long…Lucy’s brutal honesty is just what George needs and it’s not long that he starts calling on her day and night for advice; ranging from anything from what to wear to what kind of bed to pick out. Naturally, Lucy resents this, but puts up with it because she likes her job and feels that she is accomplishing something. Time passes and it’s about a year later that she’s finally fed up with George’s antics. The title of the film comes into play here and she, you guessed it, turns in her two weeks notice.
The rest of the movie, though predictable, is just as fun as the first half. Lucy interviews a fellow Harvard alumni who gets the job based on her looks (George is a notorious playboy) and one thing leads to another. The company, needing to reverse their decision to not destroy the community theatre, is now going to destroy the theatre because they need the money. It’s a lot of “been there, done that” when it comes to this sort of film, but the presence of Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock make this film more than watchable. The closest thing I can compare it to would be My Best Friends Wedding in the sense that we do know what might happen, but the plot is good enough and there is enough verbal and physical humuor to keep us laughing all the way through. Marc Lawrence, who not only wrote but directed the movie as well, shows that he is improving at this genre (he also wrote Forces of Nature and the updated version of The Out of Towners). Grant only seems to get better and better with the films he chooses, his mumbling British humour hit a note with cinema audiences around the world. He’s a terribly underrated actor. Again, while we rather know what will happen in the end, getting there is half the fun and Two Weeks Notice showed that it had all the right elements to make a romantic comedy work.
DVD Extras: Commentary with director/writer Marc Lawrence, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. HBO First Look Special (13 mins). Additional scenes (6 mins).
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