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Embarrassed, Bullock gives a lame excuse about a dying aunt and runs out of the church. It's an odd choice for a romantic comedy, as it frankly gets you irritated with its heroine from the get-go. She's not only the kind of person who leaves a cell phone on during a wedding ceremony (and the kind of person to abandon her bridesmaid duties), but is a liar too, judging from the bride's incredulous reaction to hearing the old "dying aunt" chestnut. You kind of want to hate her. And the weird thing is, I like Sandra Bullock. She’s like Julia Roberts for people who can’t stand Julia Roberts. (And let's be honest; is there anyone out there who doesn't wish that one a little bad luck? I'm sure we all like Julia Roberts. I'm also just as positive there isn't a person alive who wouldn't wish a little bad mojo on her. Come on, honestly. Tell me you watched her sobby, "I love my life!" Oscar speech and didn't wish she'd catch her dress on her pumps and take a header off the podium.) A voiceover invites us to meet Lucy Kelson (Bullock), plucky young lass with a law degree from Harvard and no qualms at all about shirking bridesmaid duties. So she's a lawyer too, and an Ivy-League-educated child of privilege? How unlikable are they trying to make her? We also meet George Wade (Hugh Grant), her "eccentric billionaire boss who's driving her to the edge" by phoning her in the middle of the night and during weddings, and -- the worst infraction -- cheerfully wearing the ugliest tie I've ever seen. "This holiday season," the voiceover says in a sly tone, "the only way to get noticed is to give notice." It's hard to follow the point of this. If George is doing one thing to drive Lucy to the edge, it's constantly demanding her attention. So you'd think the last thing Lucy would want to do is ensure he notices her, what with his habit of harassing her all day. Bullock gives the titular two weeks notice anyway. "I'm not here to pick out a wife," she insists while feebly knocking the arm off a department store mannequin, "or to pick out your clothes." We haven't really seen her asked to play matchmaker, so who knows what she's talking about there. But it's obvious that George needs all the sartorial help he can get; this in itself looks to be a full-time job. In fact, as soon as she gives notice, he apparently loses the ability to dress himself entirely. In the very next scene, the poor guy's in the middle of his office wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Short of wearing a barrel, or a shirt composed entirely of soup cans and old socks, there's nothing quite like showing up for work in a towel to let your co-workers know: "I am a danger to myself and others." Personally, I think this crosses the line from your typical "Hugh Grant is a regular guy who learns the hard way how much the woman in his life did for him" romantic comedy stuff, treading dangerously into "I have a large hole in my frontal lobe the size of an olive" territory.
June's second act, apparently, is to win the affections of George, thus instantly stirring up Lucy's jealousy and making her question her decision to leave. Or so it appears, anyway. Can the mere presence of another female suddenly make a woman suddenly fall in love with a man she formerly couldn't stand? Do any three points automatically make a triangle? Billy Wilder and Pythagoras combined would still have trouble explaining how this relationship comes to be. Can I, a mere mortal, figure it out? Not at all. More importantly, is this question intriguing enough to get me to pay ten bucks to get the answer? Not particularly. Apart from the sight of Sandra Bullock and Alicia Witt in tennis dresses, the trailer for Two Weeks Notice didn't provide much of interest over the course of two minutes. You've been given notice: this movie is liable to make a hundred minutes feel like two weeks.
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Before
the coming attractions, you usually see a public service announcement
reminding theater patrons to turn off their cell phones during the movie.
It would be nice to see the trailer for Two Weeks Notice directly
after something like that, since the first scene in the trailer is that
of a wedding being interrupted by the ringing cell of one of the bridesmaids
(Sandra Bullock). It's tempting to imagine this opening scene as a public
service announcement in itself. Mainly because it's a pleasant thought
to conjecture Sandra Bullock being reduced to doing public service announcements
-- perhaps as court-ordained penance for starring in Divine Secrets
of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Some hard time in a women's prison would
be a more appropriate sentence, though; or at least a mandatory appearance
in the next Chained Heat sequel. In terms of sisterhood, that
series has Divine Secrets beat hands down. In a shower room.
With a -- well, I'm getting off-topic.
George
tries to thwart Lucy's attempts to secure other employment, only reinforcing
her desire to leave. Enter her replacement, June, as played by Alicia
Witt -- who in theory should know plenty about working for demanding,
high-maintenance, borderline-hysterical bosses, having worked on Cybill
Shepherd's menopause-era sitcom. June's first act of the trailer is
to sock Lucy in the head with a tennis ball during a doubles game, in
a cunning effort to expose Sandra Bullock's limitations as a physical
comedian. Sadly, Bullock can't pull off this tired gag with anything
close to the panache that Brittany Murphy displays while taking an Ashton
Kutcher-fired football to the noggin in Just Married. I don't
want to crush Bullock's spirits, what with the Academy of Sporting Equipment
Thrown At Women's Foreheads Awards up so soon; I'm just saying, it needed
some work. I didn't believe a woman could get nailed in the face with
a tennis ball. I was unable to be transported to that mythical realm
of the imagination, where anything is possible, even a tennis ball to
Sandra Bullock's head.