Predictable, predictable, predictable.

Didn't care, didn't care, didn't care.

Lightweight, nonsensical, exaggerated, formulaic, recycled and oh, so familiar.

Check, got it, went with it, seen worse and what the heck.

It's Hollywood showing off its pretty people, and you know what they say: When the mortgage is due, the account's empty, the savings drained and the wife's run off with the milkman, it's time to watch the pretty people live happily ever after. Isn't that why God made Hollywood, after all?

"The Proposal" is everything you'd ever want (and probably have already ever seen) in a featherlight, logicdefying romantic comedy farce. Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) is an ice queen, the demanding editor-in-chief of a New York publishing giant.

Her earnest, eager young assistant, Andrew (Ryan Reynolds), curses her daily but sticks around because it's a sound career move.

Turns out Tate is Canadian, and her visa's expiration date is upon her. She's about to be deported and lose her job. Lacking another immediate option, she bullies Andrew to marry her (on paper) in return for a promotion. No strings attached.

But a tenacious immigration official smells fraud. He's determined to deport Tate (because, you know, those Canadians are so damned destructive to our society), forcing the unhappy couple to extend the pretense. Yeah, kind of like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" for the straight set. Kind of like Bullock's "While You Were Sleeping," too.

Kind of like a dozen or two other faux marriage offerings. I mean nothing here is even remotely original.

But you know what? This is what Sandra Bullock does best (when she's not writing Keanu Reeves love letters).

She can't quite pull off the ice princess persona (Cary Grant couldn't pull off the psycho killer guise in "Suspicion" either, but everything worked out okay).

And Bullock looks like she's having fun trying. Oh, and whoever her personal trainer is, the guy's worth every penny.

Ryan Reynolds is fun to watch, too (same trainer perhaps?), as the oppressed underdog.

When the couple reluctantly flies off to Andrew's home (on an island in Alaska, to Margaret's chagrin) for his nana's 90th birthday party, you know what's going to happen. And how it's going to happen. But it's still fun to watch.

If only—because it could have been this way—director Anne Fletcher hadn't resorted to such utterly familiar shlock. This one doesn't even try to pretend to be anything new. It could have been refreshing in the way "The Holiday" wasn't new, but utterly entertaining.

Or the way "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" wasn't new, but utterly entertaining. This one is strictly a one-trick pony, a low-concept, bythenumbers romcom regurgitation—and yet it manages to chug along nicely on chemistry alone.

But once the stock market begins to soar, and I get my revenge on the milkman, I'll be expecting better from Hollywood.