Two Weeks Notice film review

certificate_12A

TWO WEEKS NOTICE

If you put the king of romantic comedy together with the queen of screwball comedy you either have a match made in heaven, or one very predictable screwball romantic comedy. Unfortunately Two Weeks Notice is the latter.

Grant and Bullock are unquestionably the Rock Hudson and Doris Day of their time. Their all too wholesome images (in the case of Grant, make that screen image) have insured them a steady stream of lightweight roles well tailored to suit their talents. For Grant, it's his effortless charm and self-deprecating wit while Bullock's trademarks are her clowning antics and tomboyish, innocent sexuality. All these traits are exploited to their fullest here, but their familiarity, allied to a hackneyed plot, result in Two Weeks Notice losing its appeal long before the end credits start rolling.

Bullock plays a quixotic Harvard attorney, Lucy Kelson, bent on saving the architectural history of her hometown Coney Island from the wrecking ball. The playboy tycoon George Wade (Hugh Grant) is, along with his brother Howard (David Haig), the head of the Wade Corporation, a giant property developer. Having sacrificed success for her ideals, the uptight Kelson still lives at home with her attorney parents Ruth and Larry (Dana Ivey and Robert Klein). Her pitiful social life is reflected by the fact she knows the local Chinese takeaway menu by heart. By contrast the carefree Wade, who confesses, "My life is like Monopoly," spends his considerable leisure time in the company of intellectually challenged beauties.

The ill-suited pair meet when Wade is looking for a new attorney and Kelson is looking for Wade to persuade him to stop his company demolishing the community centre to make way for a new complex. She overcomes her disapproval of him and agrees to take the job when he promises to spare the center. It's a prerequisite for romantic comedies that the course of true love never runs smoothly, but even so the contrived plotting of Two Weeks Notice becomes exasperating.

Despite all this, Grant and Bullock are able to muster some laughs. The couple, who are great friends off screen, have apparently been searching for some time for the right project to work together. Let's hope they find something.