Runaway Bride
Runaway Bride is a film which could have been really good, but isn't. It contains many of the same actors as the film Pretty Woman which was made by the same director, Garry Marshall, along with a lot of the same plot devices and the same old tired love story; first they hate each other, then they think they like each other but they're not sure, then they fall in love but try to hide it, then they have a fight and split up, then one of them has some kind of inner enlightenment and they get back together and live happily ever after. Pretty Woman had a plot similar to this, but it worked and it was believable. Runaway Bride doesn't work, and I didn't believe very much of it at all. It mostly takes place in a small town where Maggie Carpenter, played by Julia Roberts lives with the most dysfunctional bunch of characters I've ever seen, and that's one of the plot devices; because poor Maggie has grown up surrounded by these sad people, and has an alcoholic dad, she's lost her identity and doesn't even know what kind of eggs she likes. Every time she attempts to marry someone, she panics at the last minute and runs away. New York columnist Ike Graham, played by Richard Gere, writes an article on her, and she complains to the editor resulting in him being fired. They meet when he goes to Sadville to try and find out the truth and redeem himself.
I think the characters in this film are supposed to be loveable. I recall Frankie and Johnny, again made by Garry Marshall, in which the supporting characters were loveable even though they were a strange bunch. But they were realistic. In Runaway Bride most of the characters are annoying and stupid, and I hate them. Even though the acting is good, it just can't hold up the ridiculous storyline. It annoyed me how the filmmakers took some bog-standard psychology, mashed it so that it would be easier for the masses to swallow, and then spoon-fed it to us in a form we just might be able to understand. They could credit their audience with some intelligence. Roberts and Gere are both fantastic actors and they couldn't really have done any better with this story; indeed there are some scenes that work quite well if only because the acting is so good, such as the scene where they have a fight after Maggie is humiliated by the whole town at a party and just accepts it as normal behaviour. Well, at least they made it bearable to watch, but only just. All in all, I'd like to like this film, I really would, but I can't.