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Two Weeks Notice
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Two
Weeks Notice is about an environmental activist,
Lucy (Sandra Bullock), going up against the establishment. She’s hard,
determined, a bit frigid. Are Lucy’s brains and beliefs going to be the butt of
every joke in this film? Mercifully, no. Even when she reluctantly agrees to
work as a personal assistant for the ‘enemy’, millionaire George (Hugh Grant),
she holds her ideological ground.
Two Weeks Notice is the debut feature
by Marc Lawrence (writer of Miss Congeniality, 2000). Harking back to classics
like His Girl Friday (1940) or Teacher's Pet (1958), Lawrence maintains a fighting equality between his male and female
leads. Even in the most sentimental moments, it does not cop-out of its initial
premise.
Not that there’s an awful lot of fight
in George. Perfectly shallow and superficial, the only advice he eagerly seeks
from his assistant is on what he should wear. When it all gets too much for
Lucy, she gives notice. Then the typical plot countdown is on – equivalent to that
window of opportunity in old comedies of remarriage between the announcement
and finalising of a divorce.
Bullock (who is also Producer) and
Grant carry this movie. They are both immensely charming and appealing actors,
and everything is shaped around their talents. Bullock has the better, more
well-rounded part, thanks especially to Lucy’s wonderfully feisty, political
parents, Ruth (Dana Ivey) and Larry (Robert Klein). Bullock also has a
wonderful scene where her character gets drunk and starts, for once, acting
flirty.
Not every element in the story is well
constructed. Lucy’s lovestruck friends from the opening scene disappear rather
quickly, brought back only for an uncharacteristically brittle joke about
romantic disillusion. Alicia Witt as June, Lucy’s professional rival, has a
one-dimensional part as an ambitious, starstruck, vampish go-getter. And a
strange, extended interlude with George getting Lucy onto a family trailer in
order for her to pee reminds us of contemporary Hollywood’s lamentable way of
portraying the working class.
Like many American fantasies, this
film tends to want to have it both ways: upholding principles of democracy
whilst enjoying the glamorous life of an aristocracy.
But that is nothing new; romantic
comedies have always indulged this particular dream since the days of Cary
Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Holiday (1938). While not in that class, Two
Weeks Notice provides terrific, savvy entertainment.
MORE Marc Lawrence: Life with Mikey © Adrian Martin January 2003 |
