Unexpectedly Fun: The Proposal
This is the first movie I've ever seen that tracked a situation in my life almost exactly. Sandra Bullock can't keep her job because she's not a US National and is in NY on an H1B Visa. She does something to mess up the procedure (that part I was knitting so I missed that) and she's about to get deported, and so as a stay-in-america scheme she forces her assistant to marry her. A LOT of people would flippantly suggest to me "Just get married" when I was like, Gosh end of visa, gotta leave. I once went to town on a girl who suggested it by saying things like how dare you suggest I whore myself to stay here, what the fuck is wrong with you etc.
This movie shows what a weird and terrible idea that is, marrying to stay in a country. So then wackiness ensues because the assistant is threatened into accepting this nutty proposal scheme, and they have to live together in his parents' house for a long weekend or something, and then the movie follows along the same lines as every other one of its genre.
This 'forced cohabitation' movie is disturbing, if you think about it. The only way these walled-off people ever actually like, get it on is if they're forced to lie in the same bed together, and forced to look at each other naked by accident or something. This is a trope that is very very often used in Korean dramas, where the unmarried women keep getting older but they have to not know anything about sex to be 'good.' It's sort of sad commentary.
The male character in this story has a totally mythically fantastic family, complete with a grandma who lives with them. This sort of old fashioned family just doesn't exist anywhere in America except perhaps Utah? So the writer put the origins all the way in Alaska. That was a sort of sad commentary too!
But it was funny. Every single bit of the comedy was obvious, but it was done in a goofy lighthearted way. There was no swearing, no violence, lots of gorgeous classic Americana interiors, a warm family dynamic and a sort of sick feminist revenge fable, kind of - the guy stayed with his horrible abusive boss because all along, underneath it, they really really liked each other. If the genders were reversed I realized, I'd be foaming at the mouth about Stockholm Syndrome.
Sandra Bullock looked in AMAZING sleek shape in this. I wish I was tall enough and wasp-waisted enough to pull off that Dior-ish black suit she wears.