It is bad enough most boyfriends and husbands are usually dragged to the theater to watch the stereotypical “chick” flick –- you know, those proverbial love stories wish a dash of comedy oozing with fluff, and the only “action” to be found is a whipped leading man trying to chase down a beautiful leading lady. But when a man is dragged into a marriage by his overbearing, well-hated, micro-managing female boss, well, that is about as torturous as running barefoot several miles over a frozen lake at midnight during the peak of winter in northern Alaska.

Thankfully for Anne Fletcher, her two lead characters are fully clothed and skipping waves in the picturesque southern panhandle of Alaska during the heat of the summer, as if to indicate, to her potential male audiences, that her latest flick, The Proposal, will not be too painful to watch. In fact, she hopes the film will, in fact, bring a few laughs out-loud.

In fact, Fletcher tries to avoid calling The Proposal a romantic comedy all together, claiming the male-repellant adjective is not the proper label for the movie she so enjoyed bringing to life. Instead, she just hopes everyone –- man or woman -– has something positive (and funny) to take away from the Touchtone Pictures distribution.

“We don’t want it to be a romantic comedy, even though you have to fit it in a peg somewhere,” Fletcher frankly told Buzzine in an exclusive interview, “but we think this is a funnier romantic comedy, because we skewed a little bit more to the funny. We did want it to be relatable to everyone.”

Fully aware many female moviegoers will “force” their boyfriends or girlfriends to include an engagement of The Proposal in their Friday night date plans, Fletcher said what separates the film from most romantic comedies are the roles played by the two lead actors, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Anne Fletcher with Sandra Bullock

Fleshing out their roles, Reynolds’s character is a top assistant to Bullock, the ultra-demanding editor at a major book publishing company in New York. Yet, instead of Reynolds being the cheesy male lead who recites poems to woo his love interest, he falls victim to Bullock’s conniving plan to fake marriage in order to save her career. Further, Bullock is anything but the promiscuous buxom swooning at the first sight of her filmmaker-defined “dream” man. Instead, Bullock plays a lady who is rather guarded and hides behind a massive emotional wall in managing her office.

“A lot of times, in romantic comedies, the man is skewed as a little fluffy,” Fletcher said of Reynolds’s character. “And you know the guys are going to be dragged there by their wives and their girlfriends, so you want to have something that is relatable.”

Indeed, Fletcher hopes both Reynolds and Bullock play characters everyone can relate to, regardless of gender or relationship status. Specifically, she hoped to touch upon everyday issues such as the boss-assistant relationship, comparing big city versus small town life, delving into everyday family arguments, addressing how to deal with overbearing federal government bureaucracy, and how to exist in a world that is becoming more contemporary with each passing day.

“You never want to be too preachy,” Fletcher said, “but you have this assistant-boss relationship, and you have this assistant who knows every last detail about the boss. But the boss never does (know about the assistant). It’s rude, it’s disrespectful, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

“There are many different colors of the rainbow, and you have to be represented. That’s the world we live in. The right people should be in there.”

Fletcher with stars Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock

Fletcher believes she definitely had the right people on set in Rockport, Massachusetts (serving as the backdrop for Sitka, Alaska, which is where a majority of the story unfolds). With Reynolds acting his comedic self and Bullock in full sweetheart mode, the solid cast — which included Betty White, Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson -– turned out to be rather carefree and easy-going, making it the perfect production for Fletcher.

“All of us love to laugh,” Fletcher told Buzzine, herself laughing quite hard as she uttered those six words. “We are kind of cut from the same cloth that way. We love to laugh, but we also love to make each other laugh. It was a strange thing, how we all connected.”

It was a connection which Fletcher believes sets The Proposal apart from other films in the comedy genre, with the off-screen chemistry between Reynolds, Bullock, White, Nelson and Steenburgen perfectly translating to the silver screen.

“It’s the synergy and the connection we all have,” Fletcher said. “You have great actors, you have a great script. Within that, you just start molding together these relationships. The stars just lined up for this movie. We were all equally on the same page with what this story needed be, how it needed to be told, and what the moving parts were. When you have your cast on board with the way you see it as well, it’s such a pleasurable experience and it’s so much easier to tell (the story).”

Fletcher on the set with Sandra Bullock

Along the way of making movie fans laugh and capturing the shenanigans of the tight-knit cast, Fletcher also hoped she could present Alaska in the best light possible. Shooting the film with an anamorphic camera, the acclaimed director made every effort to accurately portray the majestic scenery of Alaska.

“You kind of want to be a part of the scenery,” Fletcher humbly said. “Alaska plays a part; it has its own character in the film, and it’s a part that makes Sandy’s character a complete fish-out-of-water.”

On that note, Fletcher said she did not want to throw the small town of Sitka, Alaska underneath the bus. Even though she did not set foot in the union’s largest state by area, the Step Up director hoped to accurately realize her vision of the great Pacific Northwest.

“I think what I presented was ‘What is my idea of what Alaska looks like in summer,’ where I feel the backdrops are snowy mountain tops and the trees are greener than green and the flowers are in bloom… I feel like that is what Alaska is,” Fletcher said. “I wanted to do this very respectfully to Sitka. I didn’t want to Hollywood-ize it. I wanted it to be beautiful and very grounded.”

To keep the scenery as real as possible, Fletcher had members of her crew actually film certain shots and angles in the small Alaska town, only to pepper those shots from Sitka throughout the film. And just like the great expanse that is Alaska, Fletcher hopes The Proposal will end up being a larger-than-life film.

“We want this move to have big scope — a bigger movie than anyone else would do,” Fletcher excitedly proclaimed. “We just wanted to make it a gigantic film.”

Later this weekend, when the box office numbers are released, we will find out just how gigantic the film really is and whether moviegoers view the film in the same manner as Fletcher did as she directed the film.

Opening nationwide on June 19th, The Proposal was directed by Fletcher and also stars Malin Akerman, Aasif Mandvi, Oscar Nuñez and Denis O’Hare. The film was written by Peter Chiarelli and is rated PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and language.