SUN SCORE

**1/2

Two Weeks Notice finds Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant on autopilot, effortlessly employing acting muscles they've proven masters of. The result may not make for a great adventure, but it's sure a fun ride.

Bullock plays an intelligent but flighty career woman, endearing to a fault, whose personal life is a mess not entirely of her own making. Grant plays a rakish charmer who, without his piercing blue eyes and boyish charm, would be insufferable, but with them is well-nigh irresistible. If Bullock and Grant haven't taken out patents on these characters, they should.

Lucy Kelson (Bullock) is a New York lawyer with a fiercely liberal moral compass that, until now, has dictated every move she's made, personally and professionally (we first meet her lying in front of demolition equipment, trying to save a beloved neighborhood building). Her life's on the disheveled side - she eats constantly and barely earns enough to keep her head above water - but she's happy.

That all starts to change, however, when efforts to save a Coney Island community center cause her to cross paths with George Wade (Grant), a millionaire playboy who's the public face of the Wade Corp., a real-estate development firm intent on tearing it down.

Having just been blasted by his business-partner brother for spending too much time chasing skirts and not enough on legitimate company business, the momentarily chastened George is intent on finding a new chief counsel with impressive credentials (until now, impressive legs were enough). When Lucy approaches him and lets drop that she graduated from Harvard, he hires her on the spot - promising that, if she takes the job, he won't tear down the building.

Weeks go by, and Lucy has settled into her new life, offering expert legal advice and even giving the corporation a trace of a corporate conscience (thanks to a large charitable fund she's allowed to tap). But mostly, she plays nursemaid to George, picking his clothes, cleaning up his messes, preventing his mouth from running too far ahead of his brain.

All this drives her a bit loopy, as baby-sitting wasn't part of the original job description. When George summons her from a friend's wedding on an emergency that turns out to be a matter of color coordination, Lucy's had enough. She quits, offering two weeks' notice.

But guess what? George has grown to depend on her more than he thought possible, and Lucy - although she's loath to admit it - likes being needed. Of such things are movie relationships made, provided, of course, that they realize their mutual attraction in time.

Writer-director Marc Lawrence (who wrote two of Bullock's earlier films, Miss Congeniality and Forces of Nature) knows the territory on which he treads and is smart enough to keep out of his actors' way. True, the film could use a little more bite (Alicia Witt, brought on as a rival for George's affections, barely registers). And while amiable enough, the script is rarely laugh-out-loud funny.

Still, Grant and Bullock make it look easy, winning audiences' hearts. It isn't; if it were, everyone could do it (watch Ralph Fiennes in Maid In Manhattan to see a fine actor who doesn't quite pull off the romantic-comedy thing). Best advice: sit back, and enjoy the masters at work.

Two Weeks Notice

Starring Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, Written and directed by Marc Lawrence

Released by Warner Bros. Pictures

Rated PG-13 (sex-related humor)

Time 100 minutes