The Proposal's Box Office Success

Over the weekend, the Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds rom-com The Proposal opened at number one, with a surprising haul of over 34 million. Now, while I thought the trailer had a few laughs and Betty White is usually hilarious, I have no huge desire to see the picture. I'll probably just catch the film when it comes on DVD or premium cable. That being said, I'm still very happy for its success, mainly because the film was a female-centric studio picture with a lead actress in her forties. Whether or not the film was of great quality, I still feel it needs support, as a sort of message to Hollywood that films with leading women over the age of forty can still ignite the box office. The studios are rather clueless, believing any time it does occur it's a fluke. Sex and the City: The Movie - fluke, Mamma Mia! - accident, The Devil Wears Prada - surprise, Something's Gotta Give - how'd that happen. Yes, there will be pictures like Duplicity or The Brave One, which don't exactly explode at the box office, but their "failures" cannot be blamed on Julia Robert's or Jodie Foster's age. Imagine That bombed at the box office last week, but no one in the industry attributed its failure to Eddie Murphy's age, so I don't get the double standard for actresses. There are a number of issues that result in a film's weak showing - poor marketing, lack of interest in subject matter, no positive word of mouth - so it's unfair to focus entirely on the age of the leading lady. So, I feel its important for movie goers to support these films, because it will result in further production of female-centric studio pictures, and while they may not all be of the highest quality (Mamma Mia! was just bad), for every four or five poor-to-mediocre films, there will at least one good-to-great picture. That's my two cents.

OOH, also I like the fact that in The Proposal, Sandra Bullock is a number of years older than co-lead Ryan Reynolds. How's that for a reversal of Hollywood trends!