"Indecent Proposal" should prove once and for all that Robert Redford can rescue even the dumbest movie, just by showing up and flashing that killer smile.
He lends depth and humanity to an essentially one-dimensional character, a billionaire who "buys" Demi Moore for a night then pursues her like a lovestruck teen.The film, which takes forever to set up this premise, wants to be a serious treatise on greed in the '90s, an experiment about what money can really buy. But instead it's a flat, go-nowhere character study that doesn't have enough character to study.
Fans will notice that the plot resembles a bit too closely "Honeymoon in Vegas." But at least that picture had some laughs.
"Indecent Proposal" opens with voiceover narrations by both Moore and Harrelson, describing how they met and married young and how deeply they love each other. Moore becomes a successful real estate saleswoman and Harrelson an architect, with a unique design for a "dream house."
But when the bottom drops out of the California home market and the recession settles in, they lose everything. Harrelson even loses his job. They need money or they're going to lose both the home they live in and the home they're building. So, what do they do?
They head for Las Vegas.
Upon arriving, they gamble fast and loose for about an hour and find they're up some $25,000! But do they go home? Nooooo. They reason that a couple of more hours at the tables the next day and they'll be able to double their winnings.
But, of course, they lose instead. Then, Redford spots Moore and it's apparently love at first sight. Not to disparage Moore, either as an attractive woman or an actress, but what Redford sees in her that sends him on this love quest for the next hour-and-a-half is a real mystery. She is never established as the kind of person that someone of Redford's stature could possibly fall in love with at all, much less so head-over-heels.
Redford offers the million, Moore and Harrelson spend a sleepless night thinking it over and the next day take Redford up on it. But afterward, Moore and Harrelson are predictably miserable together and Redford moves in to woo her.
This is all pretty dumb - not to mention sleazy. And it's so serious-minded, so pretentiously somber, that it becomes slow, dull going.
Moore and Harrelson both seem woefully miscast, one of the film's most serious debits. But all of the characters here are drawn so superficially, with most of the screen's drama going to director Adrian Lyne's manner of making every shot seem self-important, that the story never has a chance to engage the audience in any meaningful way.
Still, there's Redford. And it is truly amazing what he can do with the most simple-minded material.
"Indecent Proposal" is rated R for sex and nudity (Moore and Harrelson), profanity, vulgarity and some violence.