Pretty Woman

Directed by Garry Marshall, Pretty Woman follows high-powered businessman Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) as he meets and finds himself falling for a plucky prostitute named Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts). It’s a fairly absurd premise that is, for the most part, employed to compulsively watchable effect by Marshall, as the filmmaker, armed with J.F. Lawton’s screenplay, delivers a familiar yet engaging romcom that benefits rather substantially from the top-tier efforts of its stars – with Gere and Roberts turning in charismatic, absorbing work that’s heightened by their palpable chemistry together. There’s little doubt, as well, that Pretty Woman‘s effective (and affecting) atmosphere is perpetuated by an ongoing emphasis on pleasant, appealing sequences and set-pieces, including a now-iconic trying-on-clothes montage and Vivian’s continuing encounters with Héctor Elizondo’s Barney Thompson, and it’s clear, as a result, that the picture’s cookie-cutter narrative never quite becomes the glaring distraction that one might’ve anticipated (and feared). The palpably padded-out running time, on the other hand, does pave the way for a final third that threatens to overstay its welcome (ie that fake breakup just seems to go on and on), although this is ultimately a fairly minor complaint for a movie that is, for the most part, an exceedingly entertaining example of the romantic-comedy genre.

*** out of ****