[HEADING=1]caffeine|[small]domble[/small][/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]PRETTY WOMAN[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Eeee, I've got cooties.[/HEADING]
Being a vulgar, modern, red-blooded male, I have been conditioned to follow in the footsteps of great men.
I refer, of course, to the Chuck Norrises and the Bruce Campbells of the world - Goliaths among men who strive to fight and burn and other mono-syllabic adjectives that sound really cool on a poster.
With this in mind, I?m sure you can understand that the films of the fairer sex confuse and frighten me. ?Emotions? and ?feelings? being thrown around like so much porridge, without a single explosion in sight.
How can the male populace take a romantic plot seriously if there isn?t a scene where the hero jumps from a helicopter, in flight, onto a moving vehicle and kills the people holding his date hostage, all before embracing his lover and delivering a slick one-liner? The very idea goes against everything Steven Seagal stands for.
So why write a review? I hear you ask.
The reason is twofold: first, my time is pretty much worthless, and I view any activity as an opportunity to silence the voices in my head that tempt me to arson.
The second reason is because of the troglodytes at my place of work.
I did have a fairly good arrangement going on; they wrote into me with their suggestions and I, in turn, ignored them. Everyone was happy, everybody won. But then somebody went and got the interest of my publisher.
The conversation went thus:
?I won?t do it!?
?Yes you will.?
?I quit!?
?No you don?t.?
?I?m leaving!?
?I know where you live.?
Boring story short, I lost. So, I went along and researched chick flicks to review. Sex and the City: the Movie, Over Her Dead Body, Dirty Dancing - all of them seemed equally unbearable, but I remembered that I?m supposed to keep an open mind about this kind of stuff.
I've had a tenuous relationship [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.148846-Poll-A-Caffeine-Fuelled-Precognitive-Love-Happens-Review#3460365] with this genre in the past, but I couldn't help but think back to watching Leaving Las Vegas, one of the films Nick Cage was in back when he was cool. Okay, it was so depressing my teeth fell out, but if I said that I was at no point moved, I would be a liar.
I was at no point moved.
So let?s dive in, and see if Pretty Woman can surprise me.
[img width]http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/scanner/2009/04/23-End/pretty-woman-roberts_l.jpg[/img][HEADING=2][/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]"Wow, a buffet of safety!"[/HEADING][HEADING=3]I'll let your imagination provide the context.[/HEADING]
Unsurprisingly, the only two characters you need to care about are helpfully supplied in the above picture.
We start the film with by being introduced to the trashy, neon nightmare that is Vivian?s life (Julia Roberts ? Ocean?s Eleven, Flick Through the Channels on any given Weeknight and Chances are You?ll Find Her).
It?s a sad opening to the film, seeing someone climbing through a window to avoid the gangster landlord collecting rent, and having to deal with a pesky roommate who?s spent all their money on Disco Powder. Again.
Vivian is a prostitute, making ends meet with clients and whatever she can find. But she isn?t living her life in misery, rather making the best she can with what she has. She doesn?t need a rich man in her life to make her happy, much in the same way that I don?t need cannon in my chest; it would just be really, really cool.
I must admit that I don?t like Julia Roberts, her acting style usually redefines the term ?generic? for me, and her huge mouth puts one in mind of a giant Pez Dispenser with a penchant for designer clothing, but here she is something different.
Whether she?s trying on new dresses or mingling with sophisticated types, Roberts? performance absolutely shines.
She?s bubbly, quirky and has all the character that living on the streets brings, and nothing her co-star can do ever comes close to touching her talents in this piece. Watching her making an effort to delve into the world of the upper crust is truly heart warming, and provides the soul that the film would of been forgotten without.
The film is truly at its best with her on screen, and you can really see her delicate touch gradually calming Edward (Richard Gere ? The Jackal? and, uh? Hachiko: A Dog?s story). From his introduction, it?s obvious that he needs it.
We first meet Eddy trying to relax at a party. Wearing the very best of late 80?s fashion, Edward wonders in a daze around the expensive, Armani hell of his day to day life, with all the energy and panache of a disused umbrella stand.
He?s a man completely devoted to his empty job, which includes buying companies and stripping them down to be sold off bit by bit. A parasite, if you will, leeching off parts of a host.
The only problem with the two leads is that Gere, try though he might, doesn?t in any way keep up with Roberts in the film.
Whether it?s his dead-eyed character or the fact that he looks so smooth that he doesn?t appear to actually have a face, Edward is usually constrained to reacting to Vivian?s off-the-wall behaviour.
The thing is that Richard Gere is the kind of guy you hire if you think that what Liam Neeson really needs is to be slightly less good looking and to have undergone a Talentectomy.
In all fairness, he?s solid. Solid acting, solid presence and solid looks.
Lots of things are solid. Wood, for example.
The rest of the cast are a veritable who?s who of cardboard cut outs. There?s the Sleazy Lawyer (Jason Alexander ? voiced Catbert in Dilbert), the Sleazy Ex-Roommate (Laura San Giacomo ? Saving Grace, Veronica Mars) and the Sleazy Hotel Manager (Hector Elizondo ? starred in such stone cold classics as Kojak and The Princess Diaries 2). It seems that Edward and Vivian were literally the only two people in the world for each other, seeing as everyone around them were either superficial financial cutthroats or plebeian literal cutthroats.
So, if you think about it, Eddy and Viv aren?t really star crossed lovers, they?re just the two people on earth who probably wouldn?t kill each other.
[img width]http://l.yimg.com/eb/ymv/us/img/hv/photo/movie_pix/touchstone_pictures/pretty_woman/julia_roberts/prettywoman5.jpg[/img][HEADING=2]"I would have stayed for two thousand."[/HEADING][HEADING=1]"I would have paid four."[/HEADING][HEADING=3]Ah, true love.[/HEADING]
Okay, if I was going to watch a chick flick then first I had to set the scene.
It was a Friday night alone in the house (I work weekends, so my Friday is your Sunday ? but don?t get me wrong, I didn?t do anything on Wednesday either) so I decided to delve in as far as I could.
I got myself a bottle of Lambrini, quite possibly the best booze you can buy with what you find behind the sofa, located a box of tissues[footnote]For crying... Dirty minds.[/footnote] and got under a blanket on the couch. Now my idea of the film wasn?t good, because I?d already got my notebook out and jotted out the lines ?two people meet / two people flirt / two people fall in love / two people fight / two people make up and live happily ever after.? Even during the opening credits I took note of the cast and crew in readiness to add them to the List of the Damned, which previously only contained the names of Joel Schumacker for what he did to Batman, the director Uwe Bolle for his entire career so far, and Tony the Tiger. He knows what he did.
So imagine my surprise when I wasn?t surprised at all.
Okay, all genres can be a little clichéd at times, but these types of films always follow a set structure to the point where you can see the spat in the second act coming before the credits even start.
The joy, then, has to come from the characters.
Now I?ve already stated that even though Julia Roberts isn?t my thing, she?s a joy to watch throughout. No, seriously, she?s brilliant and believable, but the film really falls down when it comes to Edward, who?s an intensely dislikeable character.
The fact of the matter is that he?s a man so unbelievably controlling that he has to pay a woman to do whatever he says, and his chosen profession is basically to buy other people?s hard work, hack it to bits and then sell it for spares.
Okay, with Vivian?s help he begins to realise that maybe being a complete amoral pirate isn?t quite as emotionally fulfilling as one might think, but that?s not the kind of thing you should have to pay a prostitute to tell you.
His dialogue is almost always flat and dull, and his eyes never convey the sorrow and pain that Roberts manages. Combine this with the rest of the cast being the very definition of two dimensional, and you have a group of the least relatable characters in celluloid history.
Going back to an earlier point, the film is predictable, but you know what? I'm not going to mark it down for that. Every type of film has a set pattern. Take a look at the action movie genre, for example.
Whenever I frequent the local Cineplex to watch the latest Van Damme[footnote]"Van Damme" and "latest" being somewhat of an oxymoron these days.[/footnote] I'm pretty sure that he will be found in a dive bar by some high ranking Major, whose unit he quit for some unexplained reason. The Major will present him with some nefarious mission involving nukes, hostages or a combination of the two. Van Damme will promptly refuse, but then be coerced into the mission through patriotism, honour or an embarrassingly large stack of cash. The main villain will then proceed to reduce his IQ by repeatedly making love to the soles of Van Damme's Doc Martins.
Or maybe Stallone is more you thing? Stories about a retired / burned out soldier / mercenary who can make up for several decades of missed training by standing over a forge / looking pensively in a mirror and asking "what else am I good for?" in a grizzled voice.
So I can look the other way, but what I can't excuse is the lack of direction from helmer Gary Marshall. The progression from paying clients to loving couples feels so inorganic that, in effect, it seems that Vivian falls in love with a man who has bought her some horrifically eighties dresses. It really gives the film a greasy, shallow veneer that one feels dirty watching.
Maybe it does rely too much on comparisons to old tales like Cinderella, except instead of the lady wearing a glass slipper, Prince Charming wears a...
Well, you get the idea.
[img width]http://l.yimg.com/eb/ymv/us/img/hv/photo/movie_pix/touchstone_pictures/pretty_woman/richard_gere/prettywoman1.jpg[/img][HEADING=2]"You guys work on commission, right?[/HEADING][HEADING=1]BIG mistake insulting me yesterday."[/HEADING][HEADING=3]I'm not sure I'm man enough to go shopping.[/HEADING]
The Verdict? While julia Roberts is a revelation in the film, even she can't hide the fact that the rest of the characters are flat, Richard Gere has all the charisma of a chewed shoe and it's really hard to spot where any actual relationship formed.
I think it's obvious that I didn't enjoy this movie, mainly because it's just not my thing, but I'll give it this: It wasn't boring. I managed it in one sitting, which is more than I can say for a more recent film I watched.
Curious? I'll give you a clue - It just cleaned house at the Oscars.
I'll see you next week with that.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Can't sleep? Me either.
Film: The Haunting in Connecticut [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.181389-Caffeine-The-Haunting-in-Connecticut] / The Watchmen [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.180241-Caffeine-The-Watchmen-and-a-few-words-on-the-art-of-Adaptation] / The Men Who Stare at Goats [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.170886-Caffeine-The-Men-Who-Stare-at-Goats-25th-Review] / In the Loop [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.165442] / Moon [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.162973] / Pulp Fiction [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.156647] / Night Watch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.154980] / X-Men Origins: Wolverine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.153507] / The Departed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.149527] / Star Trek 2009 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.149058#3470961] / A review of Love Happens (Without seeing it first) [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.148846#3460365] / Inglourious Basterds [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.147977#3420043] / Fight Club Essay [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.147655#3403751] / District 9 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.147097#3373011] / The Crow 4: Wicked Prayer [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.137348#3089948]
Game: Modern Warfare II, and the making of Caffeine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.161600] / Final Fantasy Double Feature [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.158465] / Resident Evil 4 Retrospective [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.148447#3440710] / Mass Effect [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.145571#3296970] / Final Fantasy: Dissidea [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.144913#3266704] / Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.140353#3149506] / Far Cry 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.139317#3129015] / Street Fighter IV [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.136868#3079685]
Other: The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z double feature [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.169416] / A Review of Society, via Call of Duty 4 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.151891] / A review of My Cat [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.146281#3332788]
