Pretty Woman

Once upon a time there was a little script who wanted to be a serious drama. The little script was the script for a dark drama about the ugly nature of the sex industry; about (roughly) a drug-addicted prostitute hired to act as escort for a rich man in order to make enough money to go to Disneyland and ultimately ejected from his life when she proved unable to stay clean.

The little script tried to get produced as a hard-hitting major motion picture, but all the studios said "No."

Then the script's fairy godfather said; "Don't worry, little script; you shall go to the production green light ball!" And he waved his wand and removed the gritty commentary and the female lead's drug habit and replaced them with a flutter of shimmering dialogue and a whimsical, upbeat ending.

And lo, the little script became the most successful romantic comedy of all time, and they all lived happily ever after.

Pretty Woman is a film that I saw for the first time yesterday, a mere twenty four years after it came out. It's a bubbly, lighthearted romcom; an artfully made feelgood movie, with superb performances and a typically 80s (although it actually came out in 1990) attention to its soundtrack album potential. It is a highly-enjoyable modern fairy tale, provided you are able to ignore a number of basic and unpleasant facets of the sex trade while you're watching it.

Is it a good film? Yes. Is it uncontroversial? Hell no. As a depiction of prostitution it sucks and it hits about as hard as a sponge, but ultimately it is a lot more fun - and was far more commercially successful - than the original concept would have been and it's sort of pointless to compare the two (he says, during a comparison of the two). The original script (working title, $3000) would never have attracted studio backing; it would have lacked the gloss of the actual product, and probably ended up in the same milieu (and with much the same takings) as the no-frills Ken Russel film Whore which came out a year later (and which I have not seen).

As it is, Pretty Woman is ultimately a flawed product, and some police sources in the 90s blamed it for a rise in prostitution in the same way that The Nun's Story bolstered recruitment in the convents. On the other hand, people blamed Fargo when someone froze to death in Minnesota, and that turned out to be nonsense, so press statistics are important. It's not a complex film, and it ducks many of the issues, but then again it's a fairy story, and by that measure it makes some attempt to convey a message about prostitution, but overall focuses on being a well-made romantic comedy fairytale.

And the message is 'marry Richard Gere and get off the streets', of course, which lacks general application, but it's something.