Two Weeks Notice vs Body Heat

I’ve had it with these kids. Every other movie lately has adults acting like kids. I’m not talking about the Freaky Friday/Big way of adults acting like kids, I’m talking about the Sandra Bullock way of acting like kids. I like Sandra Bullock. I think she’s funny and self-deprecating and pretty, and she seems smart and down to earth in nearly every part I’ve seen her play.  She also never seems a day over twenty-two.  She’s thirty-nine. Sandra Bullock characters always have boyfriend problems (usually of the I-like-him-but-he-doesn’t-know variety), or troubles at work (usually of the I’m-a-girl variety), or fights with mom (of the I’m-not-you! variety).  She throws herself into each movie, and always steals the show, and for what? To kiss the boy at the end, but not until the end, and just a kiss. Her “You love me…you think I’m pretty…you want to kiss me” stuff in Miss Congeniality was embarrassing to watch.  Wasn’t she kickboxing only eighty minutes prior? Didn’t she just save the fucking day? Only rarely (Murder by Numbers, 28 Days), does Bullock seem like a grown-up with responsibilities and decision-making abilities all her own.  The fun, girly one is cool and all, but come on, there’s a real woman in there too, right? Let’s put it this way: when they were recasting Clarice Starling, there were about ten different names being thrown around in the press.  Sandra Bullock is the right age, and has a natural southern accent.  Why didn’t anyone mention her?

In Two Weeks Notice, we get more of the same.  Sandra plays a lawyer who specializes in saving historical buildings; as the movie opens, she’s lying on the ground to stop a wrecking ball from destroying an old theater, yelling at the crew in this breathy, chirpy voice.  Alas, her beloved community center is next. There’s a scene of Sandra sitting outside the center, watching people come and go:  child ballerinas, elderly karate students, you get the idea.  Her Community Center has a lot of Spirit and Character. And Cliches. It has those too.  The guy tearing the place down is Hugh Grant.  Like Sandra, Hugh hovers around, say, twenty-seven. He’s forty-two. He usually plays either the bumbling shy guy or the big man on campus.  After Bridget Jones and About a Boy, where he had roles actually written for an adult male, I thought maybe Hugh would start shopping in the big boy section, but that just wasn’t meant to be. Yet.  He meets Sandra, when she comes to his office to protest, and admires her spunk, and gives her a job. She’s going to be his new lawyer, and she can work on whatever pro-bono charity stuff she wants, in exchange for basically being his Smithers. She has to do stuff like help him buy a mattress, or taste-test his envelope glue.  She hates him.  She loves him.  He’s rude to her and takes her for granted. Because he loves her.  They don’t realize this until he appears to be dating someone else from work.  That other girl likes him, and well, now we’ve got confusion, and what if it’s too late to tell him that she likes him?  I mean she really likes him. She Like-likes him. For real. She hearts him.  It’s all ridiculous romantic comedy clichés, just kind of stacked together.  There’s a big dress-em-up ball at one point, so Hugh can see Sandra’s outer beauty, and there’s the musical montages of them being thoughtful and lonely and wondering if they should pick up the phone, and since this is a mainstream studio comedy, there’s a scene where someone has crazy hi-larious diarrhea.  You know the remix of Counting Crows’ “Big Yellow Taxi” cover? The one with Vanessa Carlton la la la-ing like Lisa Simpson dancing with her peach tree? It’s here.

They kiss at the end.

I’m sure Two Weeks Notice has a writer and a director, but does it matter, really? I mean, come on.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Hugh and Sandra have to become old and boring and serious. I’m not even saying they should stop making romantic comedies. They’re both funny, quick and easy-going in Two Weeks Notice, and have chemistry to spare. But just once in a while, it’d be cool to see them tackle something a little more substantial.  Hell, it would have been cool to see them tackle each other.  For example…

After I saw Two Weeks Notice, I was wondering about other actors.  Some, like Bullock and Grant, seem perpetually immature, yet others never seemed to be young at all.  Currently, Russell Crowe and Julianne Moore fit the bill.  But, for an example of adults getting it on Adult, I think Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant should schedule an afternoon ASAP and watch Body Heat.

Body Heat, make no mistake, is by and for adults. It was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and is the anti-romantic comedy.  Body Heat stars Kathleen Turner (in her first movie) as Matty Walker.  She’s married to a wealthy Florida land-owner millionaire type (I don’t need to tell you that he’s several years older than her, do I?).  It’s the hottest summer anyone can remember.  Matty meets William Hurt in a bar (I don’t recall his character’s name, but something tells me Matty Walker can’t either.)  Soon, they’re going at it like rabbits (and eventually a few other animals), and somehow, Hurt gets the idea that he should kill Matty’s husband.  She’s all, “Oh really? I hadn’t thought of that. Hmm…Yeah, that’s it, kill him. What a great idea.  I’m glad you thought of that.” Anytime Body Heat is mentioned, someone brings up older movies like Double Indemnity and Chinatown, but there have been so many movies since then that have cribbed from Body Heat (basically everything with Michael Douglas, Linda Fiorentino and Sharon Stone) that it hardly seems fair to accuse it of ripping anyone else off.  Body Heat plays up the clichés of its genre, rather than hiding behind them.  Steamy, sweaty, iced-tea against your chest weather? Check. Smoky blond with a smoky blond look-a-like? Check. Double-crossings? Yep. Shady dealings? Gotcha. Kathleen Turner lip-synching oldies and making herself sick on ice cream because some boy hasn’t called yet? Hell no. Turner is never less than a real woman in Body Heat. That whisky voice, the slow strut, those evil plotting eyes.  When she smokes a cigarette and takes a drink, you know the smoke is real, and suspect the booze might be too.  And when she’s face down on the bed, and says “Don’t” and then after a long pause “stop”, you know that it’s the least necessary phrase ever uttered in a movie.  William Hurt matches her scene for scene.  He’s a smart guy, although not too smart (“I like that in a man,” she says at one point), since he gets tricked into killing the husband and all.  But, he’s not confused by this dame, no sir. Not calling up his friends and saying stuff like “I don’t know what it is! She makes me crazy!” Not William Hurt. He throws the patio furniture through the sliding glass doors and finds a real woman waiting on the other side. They kiss, but the pop song doesn’t swell and the credits don’t roll. These two don’t stop until they’re soaking in a tub full of ice. Body Heat is all about suggestion and mood. It’s never as sexual as it seems, nor as violent, but the implied actions leave an impression, like when Turner reaches down below the frame, and you think “I can’t believe she did that” when she actually didn’t do anything at all, right? All this, plus Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke as Hurt’s buddies.

Oh, and by the way, in Body Heat, Kathleen Turner is 26, and William Hurt is 30. Over a decade younger than the kids of Two Weeks Notice. Want to be extra depressed? Look up the ages of the cast of The Sweetest Thing. 

So, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant…man, I don’t know if I can take another Two Weeks Notice. Seriously, if anyone could use a little face-down-don’t-stop, it’s those two.

And yes, I’m well aware that I have yet to act even remotely close to my age. This isn’t about me. It is not.

Is not.

Two Weeks Notice:  C-
Body Heat: B+