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People seem to forget that director Garry Marshall, who helped make a star out of Julia Roberts in her first pairing with Richard Gere, also created the long-running TV series “Happy Days.” He took what was after a couple seasons a critically well-received, moderately rated show, moved it from a filmed format onto a taped studio audience set, and created a monster. What had been a fairly poignant, ironic, funny look at coming of age in what was supposedly America’s last innocent decade, overnight became a grating human cartoon stuffed with caricatures rather than archetypes.
Old habits die hard. Coming on the heels of Roberts’ pleasantly diverting Notting Hill, the best-opening comedy ever, she, Gere, and Marshall managed to eclipse those first-weekend boxoffice numbers while seeking a return to the sweet, attracted-opposites magic of Pretty Woman. But once again Marshall has turned a formerly winning combination into popular tripe. In Runaway Bride, Roberts plays Maggie, a hardware-store manager (?) in the little town of Hale, Maryland (get it? “Hail, MARYland?”), a rustic, idyllic place that’s so insanely cute it looks more like something out of that awful movie Travolta did back before the Cold War ended and his career got jump-started (coincidence? you decide...) about two guys who get kidnapped by Russians and spirited to a secret Soviet installation run by the KGB to help their agents learn how to act in a Typical American City. After three very different weddings to three very different guys (a Deadhead guitarist, a future priest, and an entomologist), fleeing each time before the actual exchange of vows -- including one instance where she galloped away on horseback -- she’s known locally as “always a bride, never a bridesmaid.” Meanwhile off in pleasantly rude New York City, Ike (Gere) is a columnist for USA Today. Hanging out in his favorite bar looking for inspiration 30 minutes before deadline, he happens to hear someone relate Maggie’s story, in understandably exaggerated form, and makes her the basis for one of his typical he-man woman-hating diatribes. But since everybody, everywhere, even in Mayberryesque Hale, reads USA Today daily over morning coffee, she sees the piece, protests, and gets him fired for libel. By the way, did I mention that Ike’s editor (Rita Wilson) is his ex-wife, married to his best friend (Hector Elizondo, who was not only in Pretty Woman but also American Gigolo), who takes photos for USA Today? Can I get a hearty “Product Placement!” from the congregation?
Ike goes to Hale, looking for revenge and a bigger story, and since he’s a smart, suave Gothamite and they’re all dim-witted inbred Norman Rockwell types, the whole town falls, blabbing Maggie’s darkest secrets, at his feet (maybe the Blair Witch wandered down the road a ways), including her dad (Paul Dooley), her best friends (Joan Cusack and Laurie Metcalf), and the fourth fiance (Christopher Meloni, from HBO’s “Oz”), whom she’s supposed to marry in a week. But Maggie falls for Ike, blah, blah, blah, wake me when it’s over.
The problems with Runaway Bride are many, starting with the the fact that Roberts’ character whould have been institutionalized a couple engagements ago, but she’s too cute. The script’s framework, except for couple surprisingly insightful statements near the end, is crammed with forced, unfunny humor (including a terribly sad slapstick bit in which sophisticated Ike apparently doesn’t know how to eat seafood) that most often leaves everybody but Julia, who to her credit makes the best of things, looking rather lost and uncomfortable. Seriously, there’s got to be a problem when a director can keep Joan Cusack from being funny. It’s doubly sad since Gere looks, in his first attempt at comedy unless you count essentially playing the straight man in P.W., like he’s got good comic instincts screaming to get out of his otherwise serious Buddhist self.
Well, let’s see -- Gere broke through playing a gigolo, Julia playing a prostitute -- maybe if only that horse had been a slut... C-
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