Cinema: Sinderella

PRETTY WOMAN

Directed by Garry Marshall

Screenplay by J.F. Lawton

No one has yet made a romantic comedy in which, say, a toxic-waste dumper falls for a terrorist hijacker. (They meet cute in an airport check-in line, and she's got a bomb in her luggage.) But Pretty Woman comes close to finding the least admirable characters to build a feel-good movie around. Richard Gere is Edward, a corporate raider who gobbles up companies and spits them out in divestible chunks. Julia Roberts is Vivian, a Los Angeles hooker whom Edward hires as his some-sex, no-love escort for the week.

J.F. Lawton's...

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