1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: CHAN ZHUANG SHENG
STUDENT ID NO: 0314527
FILM SELECTED : THE PROPOSAL & ABOUT TIME
WORD COUNT: 943words
ENGLISH 2 (ENGL 0205)
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1: COMPARE – CONTRAST ESSAY
LECTURER: CASSANDRA WIJESURIA
SUBMISSION DATE: 5TH DECEMBER 2013

2. Few weeks earlier, our lecturer, Miss Cassandra asked us to do a Compare &
Contrast essays. We were required to choose two types of genre of movies, such as
romantic comedies and animated to write an essay. I had chosen romantic comedies as
my topic because I love to watch something that could provide a lot of important
messages to me such as love between people. This kind of movies let me know about
the meaning of my life, it made me felt loved and it warmed my life. I chose The
Proposal (2009) and About Time (2013) as my writing topic. These movies were
unforgettable and touching to me.
Deciding two things was a very hard thing to me, so I planned to bring out the
differences of the main points and interesting parts from the movies to write my essay.
Firstly, the love stories of these two movies were totally different. In ‘The Proposal’, the
plot was talking about the relationship between a boss and her assistant. The boss,
Margaret Tate was starring by Sandra Bullock and her assistant, Andrew Paxton was
starring by Ryan Reynolds. Both of them were having problems with their career.
Margaret learned that she will be deported because of her expired visa, so she
persuaded her assistant, Andrew Paxton to marry her for saving her job from menace of
U.S immigration agent. Andrew took his risk and helped Margaret although he knew that
he will be imprisoned by the authority of USA. Then, they had their trip to visit the family
of Andrew at his hometown Sitka, Atlaska. Margaret realized that Andrew was wealthy
and started to change heropinion on Andrew. During this special trip, Andrew and
Margaret got to know each other in depth and started to have feeling with each other.
The movie went on until they got married together. There were a lot of awful scenes in
this movie, it made me laugh at all the time.

3. To the opposite of the movie ‘About Time’ was more on personal story. The story
began with a desperate man Tim Lake starring by DomhnallGleesons who was
searching for his true love. He had tried a lot of times but he failed until he discovered
that he could travel in time. It was the ability that every men of his family deserved. He
pursued his job as a lawyer in London. That was the place that he found his love. One
night, he and his friend visited Dans le Noir establishment. He met a sweet girl, Mary
and attracted by her. He got her phone number and return home found out his friend
was in trouble. Tim went back in time and solved his friend’s problem. This incident
caused him a blind date means he never met Mary because of the reverse of time. Due
to this incident, Tim traveled back in time to find Mary. There were a lot of conflicts
which were faced by Tim. At the end, he married Mary and born a daughter. He stopped
using his abilities when he knew that his relationship was stable enough.
Furthermore, there were differences between the personalities of characters. In
‘The Proposal’ Margaret was a powerful woman who had the strength to control all over
the company. She never gave up for what she wanted. After getting know her assistant,
Andrew she changed her bossy attitude to a generous person. During her visit to
Paxton’s family, she felt the warmth and love of family. She had gone through a lot of
great moments with Andrew and started to fall in love him. Moreover, she was no longer
the devil in Andrew’s heart. She accepted everything that Andrew did to her. Paxton’s
family accepted her as their son’s fiancé and she got to marry with Andrew in Sitka. The
guilt which they made had been demolished by their powerful love. It was unexpected
event to me and I started to believe every persons would change when they felt the
positive and negative powers from others although they were stubborn persons.

4. ‘In the movie ‘About Time’, Tim Lake was a person who was desperate to have a
girlfriend. He tried his best to find his true love although he failed for many times.
Besides, he did not waste his advantages by using his ability to travel in time for
chasing his true love, Mary. He was also a good son who took care of his parents. He
purposely traveled back in time to have some precious moment with his late father.
Furthermore, he and his wife would back to his hometown to accompany his lonely
mom. Tim was a responsible person too. He did not give up his sister although his sister
had a bad future. He tried to travel in time to help his sister out and he saved his sister’s
life. I think Tim is a very good model to me, he taught me how important family was.
To conclude, in fact these two movies are different, but both of them showed a lot
of good values to me. I cherished that I had watch these movies, they had fulfilled my
life and taught me how to be a good person. In a brief both ‘The Proposal’ and ‘About
Time’ had a lot of differences including differences in plot and characters.