Walt Disney Pictures

Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock are engaged and engaging in "The Proposal."

A man and woman, their prior relationship ranging from mere incompatibility to open hostility, fall in love; it's a story at least as old as Shakespeare and a hoary staple of romantic screen comedy. So don't expect a surprise ending from "The Proposal," Hollywood's latest version of the tale.

That's not to say the movie is a full-blown dud. It isn't, thanks mostly to solid performances by the stars and their supporting cast. Sandra Bullock plays Margaret Tate, a talented but despotic New York publishing executive who's called "the witch" in e-mails among her bullied underlings. Her harried assistant, Andrew Paxton, is played by Ryan Reynolds.

Having neglected certain paperwork, Margaret is threatened with deportation to her native Canada. She solves the crisis by declaring that she is going to marry her assistant and thereby regain her green card.

No one is more surprised by the spontaneous engagement announcement than poor Andrew. But after exacting a promotion and other concessions from his boss, he agrees to her cynical charade. Off they fly to his Alaska hometown to see his family and undergo various misadventures in accordance with conventions of the genre. Their love emerges in the picturesque village, of course, and the movie spools out to its predictably starry-eyed finish.

Anne Fletcher's direction and the screenplay by Pete Chiarelli are anything but innovative, though not so hackneyed as to snuff the movie. Bullock excels at physical comedy and playing feisty, and she's given ample opportunity for both in "The Proposal."

Reynolds, a dependable if unexceptional leading man, holds his own as a character who grows a spine while transforming himself from lackey into lover.

Betty White stands out as Andrew's quirky and slightly bawdy grandmother, and his parents are ably portrayed by Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson. Malin Akerman and Denis O'Hare appear, respectively, as Andrew's former girlfriend and a tenacious immigration official.

A few of the scenes in "The Proposal" are overlong and might profitably have been deleted altogether (e.g., the sequence involving a hungry eagle and a lunch-sized doggie). Too, there's a sense sometimes that the whole thing was pieced together rather than created whole. But in the end, "The Proposal" is just right for an inconsequential summer movie outing.

Who can resist a love story, even when the ending is foreordained?