Two Weeks Notice (2002)
June 28, 2023 10:28 AM - Subscribe
A lawyer decides that she's used too much like a nanny by her boss, so she walks out on him.
Dedicated environmental lawyer Lucy Kelson (Sandra Bullock) goes to work for billionaire George Wade (Hugh Grant) as part of a deal to preserve a community center. Indecisive and weak-willed George grows dependent on Lucy's guidance on everything from legal matters to clothing. Exasperated, Lucy gives notice and picks Harvard graduate June Carter (Alicia Witt) as her replacement. As Lucy's time at the firm nears an end, she grows jealous of June and has second thoughts about leaving George.
Debbie Lynn Elias: Lawrence keeps the pace moving and builds upon the growing relationship between Lucy and George showing snippets and splices of life neatly pieced together like a mini-travelogue, capturing such random events as lunch or shopping to show the audience how intertwined – and in love – the two have become – long before the characters themselves realize it.
Life, love and romance. Timeless. Classic. And very very funny when you’ve only got “Two Weeks Notice.”
Kimberley Jones: The promise of that kiss -- the pleasing inevitability of it -- is the reason why audiences flock to romantic comedies, but it's not enough to sell this dog. Bullock and Grant are great, bringing everything they can to roles that are underwritten and borderline dull (watch their bodies instead of their mouths -- the sight of Grant sliding across a wooden floor in stockinged feet and Bullock stutter-stepping in a long, tight dress are worth more than nine-tenths of the dialogue). Writer/director Lawrence's script is a drag, full of stock characters and stock conventions, like the patented “secondary character spouting wisdom at a crucial juncture.” (So forgettable are the supporting players that I can't even remember who said what -- all I have to go on is a scribbled note to self: “great, another second banana epiphany” -- but you can be sure it was the kind of tried and true homily devised to give the leads a shove in each other's direction.) Lawrence previously penned Miss Congeniality and the underrated Forces of Nature for Bullock, but Two Weeks Notice has only a handful of the big laughs of those films.
Stephanie Zacharek: In "Two Weeks Notice" -- which, alas, takes place in a world where people are so busy making money they have forgotten how to use apostrophes . . . "Two Weeks Notice" makes "Maid in Manhattan" -- in which a highfalutin Republican politico falls in love with a lowly hotel maid -- look like a brilliant Marxist treatise. Of course, romantic comedies don't have to be political at all -- but why bother with the clever setup if you're just going to waste it? Instead of using George and Lucy's most obvious differences to ignite sparks, Lawrence desperately looks elsewhere, seizing on George's haplessness and Lucy's personality tics. He shows us George and Lucy fumbling toward love in the most bored manner possible -- the whole movie feels like a sheaf of paperwork they have to complete before they can finally hook up.
With better material, Bullock and Grant might have had the right chemistry: They have an easy, flirtatious rapport with each other. But their rapport comes out of left field -- it seems to have everything to do with the actors but nothing to do with the characters.
Trailer
Dedicated environmental lawyer Lucy Kelson (Sandra Bullock) goes to work for billionaire George Wade (Hugh Grant) as part of a deal to preserve a community center. Indecisive and weak-willed George grows dependent on Lucy's guidance on everything from legal matters to clothing. Exasperated, Lucy gives notice and picks Harvard graduate June Carter (Alicia Witt) as her replacement. As Lucy's time at the firm nears an end, she grows jealous of June and has second thoughts about leaving George.
Debbie Lynn Elias: Lawrence keeps the pace moving and builds upon the growing relationship between Lucy and George showing snippets and splices of life neatly pieced together like a mini-travelogue, capturing such random events as lunch or shopping to show the audience how intertwined – and in love – the two have become – long before the characters themselves realize it.
Life, love and romance. Timeless. Classic. And very very funny when you’ve only got “Two Weeks Notice.”
Kimberley Jones: The promise of that kiss -- the pleasing inevitability of it -- is the reason why audiences flock to romantic comedies, but it's not enough to sell this dog. Bullock and Grant are great, bringing everything they can to roles that are underwritten and borderline dull (watch their bodies instead of their mouths -- the sight of Grant sliding across a wooden floor in stockinged feet and Bullock stutter-stepping in a long, tight dress are worth more than nine-tenths of the dialogue). Writer/director Lawrence's script is a drag, full of stock characters and stock conventions, like the patented “secondary character spouting wisdom at a crucial juncture.” (So forgettable are the supporting players that I can't even remember who said what -- all I have to go on is a scribbled note to self: “great, another second banana epiphany” -- but you can be sure it was the kind of tried and true homily devised to give the leads a shove in each other's direction.) Lawrence previously penned Miss Congeniality and the underrated Forces of Nature for Bullock, but Two Weeks Notice has only a handful of the big laughs of those films.
Stephanie Zacharek: In "Two Weeks Notice" -- which, alas, takes place in a world where people are so busy making money they have forgotten how to use apostrophes . . . "Two Weeks Notice" makes "Maid in Manhattan" -- in which a highfalutin Republican politico falls in love with a lowly hotel maid -- look like a brilliant Marxist treatise. Of course, romantic comedies don't have to be political at all -- but why bother with the clever setup if you're just going to waste it? Instead of using George and Lucy's most obvious differences to ignite sparks, Lawrence desperately looks elsewhere, seizing on George's haplessness and Lucy's personality tics. He shows us George and Lucy fumbling toward love in the most bored manner possible -- the whole movie feels like a sheaf of paperwork they have to complete before they can finally hook up.
With better material, Bullock and Grant might have had the right chemistry: They have an easy, flirtatious rapport with each other. But their rapport comes out of left field -- it seems to have everything to do with the actors but nothing to do with the characters.
Trailer
This is another movie that shouldn't work and yet it does because of the actors. Even if there's a diarrhea scene (well, thankfully not shown) in the traffic jam. I do agree with Carillon that I'd like to see more of a realization for Hugh as well.
The quiet moment that stands out to me is when they're at lunch in a restaurant and talking about June or whoever and if you watch them, they are quietly swapping foods on their plate like it's a longstanding thing they do. He removes her beets and you can briefly hear her mutter "beet, beet" to get the last one, something like that, and that's as open as it gets. They've got such a relationship down that they have this as a silent routine. I like that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:24 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
The quiet moment that stands out to me is when they're at lunch in a restaurant and talking about June or whoever and if you watch them, they are quietly swapping foods on their plate like it's a longstanding thing they do. He removes her beets and you can briefly hear her mutter "beet, beet" to get the last one, something like that, and that's as open as it gets. They've got such a relationship down that they have this as a silent routine. I like that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:24 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I remember seeing an interview for Gravity with Alfonso Cuarón where he was asked what made the production team settle on Sandra Bullock in particular as the lead, when apparently every top actress in Hollywood wanted the part.
Cuarón said that the part required the actress to shoot long days in uncomfortable fake gravity rigs, appearing in virtually every scene in the complex shoot, doing many, many technically onerous takes of each shot, usually with no one to interact with. He said that not only was Bullock a terrific actor and a bankable star, but she is quite famously also one of the very nicest people in all of Hollywood. And if you were going to spend 12-16 demanding hours a day, six days a week with someone doing uncomfortable work, it made all the sense in the world to cast Bullock, "It was selfish. We decided to lock ourselves in a studio with the nicest person."
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Bullock's charm is apparently quite real. And as long as she wants, she can probably keep working, because people just like her. As with this movie, the scripts don't even have to be that great. People just cannot help but like her, on-screen and off.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:46 PM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
Cuarón said that the part required the actress to shoot long days in uncomfortable fake gravity rigs, appearing in virtually every scene in the complex shoot, doing many, many technically onerous takes of each shot, usually with no one to interact with. He said that not only was Bullock a terrific actor and a bankable star, but she is quite famously also one of the very nicest people in all of Hollywood. And if you were going to spend 12-16 demanding hours a day, six days a week with someone doing uncomfortable work, it made all the sense in the world to cast Bullock, "It was selfish. We decided to lock ourselves in a studio with the nicest person."
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Bullock's charm is apparently quite real. And as long as she wants, she can probably keep working, because people just like her. As with this movie, the scripts don't even have to be that great. People just cannot help but like her, on-screen and off.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:46 PM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
Looked at too closely it suffers from the problem that afflicts many (most?) romantic comedies, which is that in real life the principal characters would be much closer to the "totally insufferable" end of the charm scale.
If one is willing to grant the usual amount of bemused tolerance or suspended disbelief or whatever charity it is that we routinely grant to the people populating this film genre then this is not a bad movie - but the charisma of the stars suggests that in the right hands it could have been much better.
Manages to be decidedly adequate viewing fodder for a slow evening but, alas, not much more.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:57 AM on June 30, 2023
If one is willing to grant the usual amount of bemused tolerance or suspended disbelief or whatever charity it is that we routinely grant to the people populating this film genre then this is not a bad movie - but the charisma of the stars suggests that in the right hands it could have been much better.
Manages to be decidedly adequate viewing fodder for a slow evening but, alas, not much more.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:57 AM on June 30, 2023
@Dirtyoldtown, that's very cool! BTW, no one's ever made a Fanfare post about Gravity. Is anyone game to do it? It came out ten years ago, whoa!
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 4:23 AM on June 30, 2023
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 4:23 AM on June 30, 2023
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posted by Carillon at 10:34 AM on June 28, 2023