Two Weeks Notice

Two Weeks Notice is a successful romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant in top form. The ending may be predictable, but the individual scenes contain quite a few surprises, and the film is witty all the way through.

Sandra Bullock plays Lucy Kelson, who is a lawyer but utterly indifferent to money. Instead she is the sensible-shoes type, deeply committed to defending the rights of the little man, and holds all the right opinions.

Hugh Grant is the multimillionaire George Wade, who is the public face of the Wade family's construction empire. He is, to put it mildly, not particularly politically correct. In fact he is something of a playboy, and on principle he only hires beautiful young women as his right hand.

It really goes completely against Lucy's principles to work for a cynical businessman like George Wade, but he literally makes her an offer she cannot refuse. If she will work for him, he promises to preserve the community centre whose continued existence she has long been fighting for.

In the long run, however, working for George becomes too stressful, for Lucy does not get a second's peace. George's dependence on her eventually becomes too much, so she hands in her notice with two weeks' warning. In the course of those two weeks the pair must then discover that they really cannot do without each other.

One is never really in any doubt about how it will turn out, and one could have wished for a little more resistance from George's cost-conscious brother Howard and the irritating rival June.