'Two Weeks Notice' doesn't quite work

Some day, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant will make a perfectly charming romantic comedy together. Until then, we have "Two Weeks Notice," to remind us that bad things can happen to good ideas.

Not that there isn't any pleasure whatsoever to be had in Marc Lawrence's romantic comedy; indeed, just hearing Grant's plummy voice (no meticulous American accent for him, thanks very much) intone words like "Pokémon," "vellum" and "kebab" is almost enough to justify a popcorn purchase.

Grant now seems firmly entrenched in what we might call the Charming Cad phase of his career — following right behind what the less charitable might describe as the Stammering Floppy-Haired Twit phase — that began with "Bridget Jones' Diary" and continued, delightfully, with "About a Boy." Here, he wanders about grinning aimlessly and affecting breezy yet witty indifference, and it's starting to feel less like acting and more like an exceptionally good personal-appearance tour.

Bullock, by contrast, is working very, very hard, and the strain shows. She plays Lucy Kelson, a brilliant Harvard-bred attorney who goes to work for George Wade (Grant), the cavalier scion of one of those sharklike real-estate-development firms. They're opposites — she's a save-the-whales do-gooder, while he's a self-absorbed playboy — and, as anyone who's ever watched a romantic comedy knows, opposites attract. Eventually.

Lucy and George bicker and dither and endure a really long and embarrassingly juvenile bathroom scene that's probably supposed to be funny, but it's all quite tired. Bullock's forehead-wrinkling, absent-minded shtick (which is occasionally very good; she's got a tiny moment here with a potted plant that's expertly timed) never quite meshes with Grant. Blame Lawrence's screenplay, which too often substitutes cuteness for wit. A movie that starts off with a montage of coo-inducing baby pictures of its stars isn't exactly going for sophisticated humor.

Bullock has said in interviews promoting "Two Weeks Notice" (which she produced) that this will be her last romantic comedy for a "good long time." Too bad, because she never found quite the right vehicle for her light-voiced charm, and because this film — with its haphazard, muddy cinematography, unflattering costumes and slack pace — is a sour note on which to go out.

In its favor, "Two Weeks Notice" does have a lovely long shot of the Chrysler building from a helicopter in which Lucy and George ride — and darned if Lawrence can't turn even that into a romantic moment, or a funny one, or anything at all for that matter. Screwball romantic comedy, it appears, is still safely dead.

"You don't deserve Katharine Hepburn," says Lucy to George in one scene, as George describes what kind of lawyer he should hire (he's picturing "Adam's Rib"). No, but we do.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.