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TWO WEEKS NOTICE Send This Review to a Friend
Hugh Grant is the closest we have to Cary Grant. Nobody can duplicate Cary, but Hugh has a contemporary version of the debonair, devil-may-care demeanor that adds up to casual charm. He's good looking and spells romantic danger. In "Two Weeks Notice" he's an armful for Sandra Bullock to handle, and the result is what one might call a cute film that's easy and quite enjoyable to watch even as we judge the story preposterous. Bullock is the producer and has given herself a role in which she can show off her own frothy comic and romantic side. She and Grant make a good team.
In the light-hearted and light-headed film written and directed by Marc Lawrence, Bullock plays Lucy Kelson, a smart Harvard-educated lawyer with a social conscience, acquired growing up with her activist Brooklyn parents, played by Dana Ivey and Robert Klein. She'll lie down on a street to prevent a landmark from being torn down, and she has her preservation sights on a Coney Island community center that has special meaning for her. But the powerful real estate Wade Corporation intends to destroy it to make way for a huge project.
It's meet cute and coincidence time. Lucy approaches company honcho and multi-millionaire George Wade (Grant) to appeal for the center. But Wade is quickly impressed by her legal credentials and wants to hire her. He has a reputation as a rich playboy who prefers lawyers more suited to bed than bar, and Lucy is dubious. She regards working for him as a sellout, but he promises her power to do good with his money and he strikes a deal to spare the center if she'll be his counsel. Is there a doubt that she'll accept?
Trouble brews quickly. Wade impinges on her time with no conscience and she becomes his right hand assistant, even to the point of picking out his clothes. Her life is no longer her own. But intense Lucy, who has always had trouble loosening up, is smitten by him even though she doesn't want to admit it to himself. And Wade is falling for her. Ethical problems loom as Wade's brother George (David Haig), the power in the company, plans to tear down the center despite his brother's commitment.
There's catty fun when Lucy decides to quit and June (Alicia Witt), a sexy, flirtatious climber, is hired as her replacement. Anyone who has seen Doris Day-Rock Hudson or Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn flicks knows how all this well end. But there's amusement in getting there and "Two Weeks Notice" serves modestly in the escapist light entertainment department. A Warner Bros. release.
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