Pretty Woman
PRETTY WOMAN (15)
D: Garry Marshall
Buena Vista/Touchstone (Arnon Milchan & Steven
Reuther)
US 1990
119 mins
Romance/Comedy
W: J.F. Lawton
DP: Charles Minsky
Ed: Priscilla Nedd
Mus: James Newton Howard
PD: Albert Brenner
Cos: Marilyn Vance
Richard Gere (Edward Lewis), Julia
Roberts (Vivian Ward), Ralph Bellamy (James Morse), Jason Alexander (Philip Stuckey), Laura San Giacomo(Kit De Luca), Hector Elizondo(Barnard
Thompson)
Generally speaking, chick flicks usually don't appeal to a
male audience, but every once in a while comes a film like Pretty Woman, which can be equally enjoyable to both sides of the gender divide.
A contemporary spin on a Cinderella-esque love story,
Pretty Woman stars Richard Gere as a wealthy businessman who invites high class prostitute Julia Roberts to spend the week with him so he can successfully oversee a deal with a merging
company.
It's shameless Hollywood stuff, painting a love story
where there is no right to be one, but with the charmingly good performance from Julia Roberts and a knockout soundtrack of popular songs, the story and romance develops rather
feasibly.
Richard Gere is quite uncharismatic with his Prince
Charming role, but the rest of the cast pick up the pieces, especially Roberts, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her work.
It's certainly for the best that the original screenplay
went through major re-writes prior to production, the initial script didn't have a happy ending and was far more bitter in tone. Definitely not the sort of thing you'd come to expect from a
Disney production arm.
8/10
