Sandra Bullock says being felt up by comedy legend Betty White in The Proposal "was the best second-base I've ever had."

LOS ANGELES -- In The Proposal and in no particular order:

A nude Sandra Bullock and equally exposed Ryan Reynolds crash into each other before toppling -- amid skin-smacking sound effects -- into a fleshy bare-assed heap;

Betty White fondles Bullock in an attempt to locate her breasts;

And, as an exotic dancer, The Office's Oscar Nunez performs a strip-tease in which his banana hammock comes so precariously close to Bullock's face, she could use it as a napkin.

"God, when you put it that way," says Bullock, "it sounds like we shot a soft-porn."

Well, not quite. Fact is, compared to The Hangover, Zack and Miri Make a Porno or the collected works of Judd Apatow and Sacha Baron Cohen, The Proposal, opening Friday, is still pretty tame; after all, how many of Bullock's fans really want explicit knowledge of Nunez's banana hammock?

Nevertheless, the end result was racy enough to warrant the 44-year-old Bullock shoot her first nude scene -- for the aforementioned bodily collision with 32-year-old Reynolds. "Sadly, my first and last nude scene got laughs," she tells journalists assembled at a Beverly Hills hotel. "But it was all choreography. Literally, when you read it on the page, you realized, there's no way to shoot this unless you're buck naked. So then I went to the gym and cut out the carbs. But if it turned out funny, it was worth it. But when we were shooting it was odd. There are things stuck to areas that generally you don't have things stuck to. I mean, you have things covering your body but not stuck to it. And then they got unstuck, we didn't care because we were so tired."

Says Reynolds, "You have these scenes where you're slamming into each other and falling to the ground, and I'd always know when something popped out wrong. By hour four, I was throwing caution to the wind, and other things too."

The worst part for Reynolds? "Calling my mom (while) nude."

As for a separate scene in which comedy legend White gropes her, says a straight-faced Bullock, "Betty White feeling me up was the best second-base I've ever had. She was tender but firm and found them instantly, which is not easy. She was cupping, gentle, loving. I felt satisfied after."

"And I found three!" White interjects.

All of this comes about in the movie when Bullock's hard-driving publishing executive bribes her abused, brow-beaten assistant (Reynolds) to marry her so she can stay in the U.S. and avoid deportation back to her native Canada. (Yes, here is a Canadian, albeit played by an American, who never says sorry or is polite to a fault. Actually, that role falls mostly to Reynolds, who is portraying an American, even though in real-life he's the Canadian. Got it?)

Their conspiracy-of-two quickly leads the faux lovebirds back to his native Alaska, where fish-out-of-water Bullock must cope with her salt-of-the-earth, future in-laws (White, Mary Steenburgen and a gruff Craig T. Nelson) as well as her pending impromptu and entirely fraudulent nuptials.

For Bullock, the movie obviously marks a return to the milieu in which she made her mark: The romantic comedy. But the actress, whose credits include Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice and While You Were Sleeping, says not so long ago she doubted whether she would ever return to the genre.

"I stopped doing them, six, seven years ago," she says, calling more recent entries in the genre, "terrible. They're bad. They're not funny. They shouldn't be classed as romantic comedies. And most of the time they are not romantic ... I got away from comedy because it wasn't being done in the way I loved and the way I can do it; it made me sad. Because I was like, 'It's not appreciated, no one's writing it, I have to abandon it.' Then it came back to me."

Specifically in the form of The Proposal, directed by Anne Fletcher, the choreographer-turned-filmmaker who made an impression last year with the surprise hit Katherine Heigl vehicle 27 Dresses.

Says Bullock, "(The Proposal) reminds me of the films from like the '30s and '40s where there was a landscape and a story and drama was allowed to be in there. You can't have good comedy without drama in it. And they don't generally write well for women in romantic comedies. And I love my comedy too much to bastardize it with bad romantic comedy. So I was like, 'Okay, that's done, I'm going to find another way to work and do it in a way that I love.' So I'm not calling this a romantic comedy."

Maybe she's not, but everyone else will. And critical to the success of any rom-com? The chemistry between its leads, naturally. "There are people who have worked together in films who have despised each other but had enormous chemistry, so you just never know," says Bullock, who has known Reynolds for years. "They said Ryan's going to do it and I said that's the only person I could do this with, that's the person I want."

Additionally, the script gave Bullock the chance to jettison her girl-next-door image for something decidedly more hellish and stiletto-heeled.

"It's such a joy to be angry. Having to be nice all the time is exhausting and boring ...

For three months I could be a bitch. People would be like, 'Why are you that way?' And I'd be like, 'It's my character.' I don't have to apologize. I take it home with me. It was pure heaven. We all have it in us. People who do comedy are really the nastiest people on the planet."

Except -- at least according to Reynolds -- Bullock.

"I'm not one to mythologize other actors too much, but Sandy's a gorgeous woman and what I think fall in love with her is that she doesn't seem to know it. She doesn't seem to know it in a way other gorgeous people maybe would. That's what makes her so accessible. And her ability to laugh at herself, which is something you don't really find."

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