Word: hollywoodized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that propagandizes crabby old guys attracting cute young women. This is not a comedy scenario; it's a criminal offense, right? Except that in Whatever Works, Allen has taken his usual ingredients--mismatched pairings, the collision of the bitter and the sweet, an abiding love for Dixieland jazz, classic Hollywood movies and his hometown--and somehow made his freshest film in ages. After four pictures abroad, two of which (Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona) were pretty good, the 73-year-old writer-director has found new vigor and warmth in his old surroundings. Melody's perky nature rubs...
...Hollywood were to crown a king and queen of nice movie stars, Sandra Bullock would be on a throne next to Tom Hanks. She's been a headliner since the mid-1990s (she turns 45 in July) without incurring the hatred or envy of the town's rapier-tongued gossips. Apparently she is kind to children, dogs and the little people on the set. Onscreen, Bullock personifies the wholesome, working-class common sense of the ideal friend or girlfriend. From her first hits, Speed and While You Were Sleeping, she knew how to get laughs and produce tears with equal...
...movie plot of a successful career woman and her male secretary was actually a Hollywood staple in the '30s (Man Wanted) and '40s (Take a Letter, Darling), long before the setup was common in American business. Here, the underling role allows Andrew to direct the kind of barbs at Margaret that all secretaries wish they could say with impunity to their bosses. (For her to be sweet, he says, "is going to require that you stop snacking on children when they dream.") The Proposal also employs the antique device of the warring couple obliged to act like lovers. Margaret...
...Bullock faces two big challenges. She's a star actress at a bad time for the breed (a recent Forbes study showed that Hollywood's 10 top-earning actors were all men), and her gifts of subtle endearment just aren't needed in movies that force their stars into Manichaean opposition...
...problems: the rise of younger actresses like Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl, who have built their own constituencies with hit movies and are now more likely than Bullock to be offered the few good romantic-comedy scripts that get written these days. Being liked is great, but Hollywood loves nothing more than a solid movie that proves a star personality can again be box-office gold...