Pretty Woman (1990) | Movie Review

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*So Many Sequels intro music plays*

Josh: Hey everybody. This is So Many Sequels. I’m Josh.

Andrew: I’m Andrew.

Garrett: I’m Garrett.

David: And I am David.

Josh: Welcome to the show. We are smack dab in the middle of romcom month. We’re each picking a different romcom this month to celebrate you know, Valentine’s Day and all the love that goes around February, because we’re doing romcoms.

We’re talking about Pretty Woman this week. A classic. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Pretty much the movie that put Julia Roberts on the map. This was Andrew’s pick. So Andrew, why don’t you tell us why you wanted to do Pretty Woman.

Andrew: For starters. This might come as a shocker to some of you. I have never seen Pretty Woman.

David: It is a shock, bit of a shocker. I think.

Josh: Yeah. It’s one of those. It is, but it isn’t. It is , but it isn’t.

David: Sometimes it just depends on who you, it just depends on your parents really.

Josh: At that time for our age. Yeah.

Andrew: And everybody, I know when I, when I explained to them, like, I’ve never seen Pretty Woman, I get this reaction of, “what is wrong with you? Are you, are you okay?” You know? And like, and, but the other thing is, is that like while I was watching this movie- while I was watching this movie, it, it gave me kind of nostalgia feels. I remember whenever I was about 18, I just graduated high school. I went to LA to like, just for vacation. We were out there. We were, I was out there with my family and some friends

Garrett: And we picked up prostitutes,

Josh: Just gave me all this-

Garrett: Family outing! You know, going down to Hollywood Boulevard. On the strip, watch the strip.

David: Oh man.

Andrew: No, we went on one of those. We went on one of those, like the star tours or whatever. And the movie that the guy that the driver kept referencing was Pretty Woman. And I got none of those references. So I’d be, there’d be like, this is where she spit her gum out. This is the hotel where they got at and, and that’s, that was part of the, that was part of the tour. And I’m like, you know, for someone who’s never seen Pretty Woman, there’s a lot of Pretty Woman references here. Can I get something to like, say, oh, I don’t know, Top Gun, or, you know, like something else that’s kind of known.

Josh: You mean to tell me that you went on a star tour like nearly 20 years ago. And most of the references were Pretty Woman and it took you 20 years to finally resolve that and watch it?

Andrew: Kind of.

David: He’s waiting for us to come around.

Josh: I would have gone home immediately be like, I got to watch that movie so I understand what these places were, but 20 years I find that interesting.

Andrew: No, it just like, it made me just after that. I’m like, why, why should I watch Pretty Woman anymore? Basically the whole movie was explained to me.

Josh: And yet, not.

David: So here we are.

Garrett: So what was your take?

Andrew: I thought it was cute. I thought it was very heartfelt and I thought the performances were very good. And Julia Roberts in it is amazing. And Jason Alexander was a real asshole.

David: Yeah, this was, this was about three years before his Seinfeld break.

Josh: Is there a, but coming? Cause it felt like you were steering us toward a but.

Andrew: Nope.

Josh: No. Okay. We’re good.

Andrew: That was it. I, I genuinely enjoyed it. I did really enjoy it. There were like, there was a lot of people in it like stars that weren’t big yet and like stars that we’re big in other areas, like say Hank Azaria

Josh: Hank Azaria!

Andrew: And Hector Elizondo. I loved Hector Elizondo as the hotel manager. He was great.

David: There’s a great reference to this whole thing. In this episode of American Dad, featuring Hector Elizondo, where he plays a concierge and he talks about how his whole life he’s played concierges in movies, just so he can support his real passion of being a concierge.

It’s it’s a pretty funny episode. I watched it just the other night as homework for this. Hector Elizondo is really great in a kind of an understated role.

Josh: Andrew, did you feel like, did it, did it live up to that hype of, “I can’t believe you haven’t seen this. What’s wrong with you? Blah, blah, blah.” Did it live up to that?

Andrew: It did. I’ll say it did. I can now say that I have seen Pretty Woman.

Josh: You have. I liked it a lot. I hadn’t seen it since I was a lot younger, so I didn’t have a lot of, I didn’t remember like, you know, exactly how everything went, but it was really quite charming, I thought. The leads, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are both very good. It’s such a great introduction to Julia Roberts on the big screen, you can see why she’s got all that star appeal, all of it. Fun story, a few things that don’t age well, but I won’t fault it for that. Mainly with it being about, you know, Richard Gere is this high class billionaire and Julia Roberts is this street level prostitute. And she’s like getting a taste of the, of the rich life, but it was really like super obnoxious at times, but she plays it so well. And I think that is what, what saves it anytime you might want to roll your eyes, is she kind of reacts how you would, I think, or how a normal person would. I think back to the scene where they’re at dinner and she’s like, just struggling with the escargo. That would be me!

David: There’s a genuineness.

Josh: Yeah! She’s very genuine. So I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun. I thought that Richard Gere was not as problematic as I was afraid he was going to be, you know. He stays pretty, pretty good again with some faults, but nothing I would you know, write it off for. So fun movie over all. Gary Marshall, director, that man made a lot of great stuff. I mean, this is a guy who created Happy Days. He did Overboard, Runaway Bride. Dude’s a master of that kind of genre.

David: Hocus Pocus. He was involved in too.

Garrett: I also hadn’t seen it. My rom com repertoire is slim, especially early ones. So I hadn’t seen this. Super charming. However, I got almost nothing from Richard Gere. He was a blank, boring canvas upon which Julia Roberts got to paint. I don’t really think he supplied much other than being the person. I think you can insert any human being in there and you don’t lose anything or gain anything by the fact that it’s Richard Gere. I think that Julia Roberts is so charming that she brings out the best in everybody when they’re being good or bad. She is without doubt the star of this movie, no other person matters. And Richard Gere was just there genuinely, in my opinion, I, I connected with him 0%. He was a nice guy. He was the only person that saw her as a person. Touching on what Josh said is while he is a nice person, and is the only person that treats her well. That is an important part, but it really does also, in my opinion, take away like this gallivanting importance of the rich. And I struggled with that. Not a ton, but enough for it to be noticeable. And I think that the message of seeing someone as a person is the bigger message. And I don’t think it gets as much attention because there are parts where Julia Roberts and her character brings Richard year down to the humanity. Like when he’s taking off his shoes and walking in the grass. But it’s not really as understated as the glitz and glamour and the elevation of her into class. A lot of times it felt like he was testing her. Can this street level sex worker live up to the high expectations of the glitz and the glam that I have? And if she can, then I love her and if she can’t then too bad. It was just stated enough to where it bothered me. But not enough to take away from the genuine enjoyment.

David: See for me, I’ve seen this movie probably too many times. Like I’ve seen this movie twice in Disney World. So like I have seen this movie too many times. I classify it as a mom movie. I told my mother that and she laughed very hard. Cause she’s like, “it’s not a mom movie. It’s just a movie that when you were a kid, all the moms watched” and I was like, exactly. I have some things I could say, but I was really interested. So I kind of asked my mom, “mom, what is it about Pretty Woman that you like? You were the target demo of the day.” She said two things one, and this is where I think we need to think about our perspective as a couple of guys, as four guys in the, in 2020s, she said Richard Gere was like the perfect guy in terms of his look, he was like distinguished and he looked like the kind of guy that a lot of women in the nineties would want to have. He was just like A-level attractive.

Garrett: He’s also noted that in most of his movies he plays a rich billionaire.

David: And then my mom also said that there was the Cinderella component of sort of being a, sort of a forgotten person and having someone in society reach back out, you know, like basically pull you up into it. She talks about it being a Cinderella story in the movie. I think it’s kind of interesting that they go with the Cinderella comparison, because I think there’s also a bit of a Beauty and the Beast thing here. Richard Gere plays this character that from a certain perspective is kind of a bad guy, a monstrous guy. His job is disassembling businesses and basically tearing up people’s livelihoods. Acquisitioning things and then dispersing the assets. It’s kind of a hard, mean job. And you can see where that job could take you in the Jason Alexander role of a guy whose kind of like left his conscience behind long ago. Richard Gere’s having this crisis of conscience and Julia Roberts’ character is able to kind of bring out his better nature so that by the end of the movie, he changes what he wants his life to be. Which is kind of more of a Beauty and the Beast story component of bringing out the better part of the man. But much like Cinderella, the fact that he’s able to look past her outward problems and look past her outward beauty and see her inner beauty is kind of what, you know, as a romcom goes, especially in the nineties, women really wanted for the male hero to look past their flaws or look past their outward appearance and see their inner beauty. So in that way, I think it succeeds everywhere that it needed to. It wants to tell this story about two people who kind of improve each other. Now they go through their struggles, they go through their little, you know, there’s some difficulties and hardships, and obviously just the idea of a really rich guy falling in love with a call girl is going to have some problematic components, but they work through that by the end to the point where he can show up on his white steed and take her away. It’s kind of a cliche ending, but I think the journey there gets you some good character moments and gives you reason to feel for, at the very least, Julia Roberts character. And you might feel a little bit for Richard Gere. I thought that the moment he has with the older man, when he says, “I’m not going to do this, I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you keep your company going.” I think is a cool earned moment of him having this struggle throughout the movie and seeing things from a different perspective.

So, I really enjoy. I think that it is kind of one of those quintessential movies when it comes to the romcom genre. I think a lot of people, if you would ask them the best romcoms they would throw out When Harry Met Sally and Pretty Woman and I don’t know, probably something with Matthew McConaughey.

Josh: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past!

David: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is, you know, I think right up there. Mount Rushmore.

Garrett: I want to piggyback on two things cause I agree with 90% of what you said. And I think they could have enhanced the level of feeling I had for Richard Gere had he at any point in time shown any kind of like hostility. I think that he was so level the whole way through that while I did see the struggle, it didn’t really feel like a struggle for him. Because he was always shown as a pretty good guy. I mean, he never was shown as a typical asshole. He’s just cold. He just had no emotion. He never attacked whereas Jason Alexander did. And I think that would have highlighted the struggle a little more, but for me, he was just so flat all the way that even his struggle was pretty chill.

David: I think part of the problem with that is that probably that moment happens before this movie. Because the movie more or less opens with the girl that he does want to be with breaking up with him. So probably, you know, that was his wake up call to like think, you know, and so we kind of miss what pushed him to start this way. And so he’s kind of in this like, weird head space of still trying to do his job, but then also doing this kind of spur of the moment thing that he starts up with Julia Roberts’ character.

Garrett: The other thing that I have is that for the time period especially, this is a very positive outlook on sex workers. I said that the overall message I think is good and lands, but there are parts where if you hold a mirror up to it, for me glorifying the elite class, whereas it easily could have done a great job of just punching down at the working class and it did not do that. I mean, there were moments where you had that level of disdain from the elites, but they do such a good job of making her be seen as a person. That punching down effect that it could have had, especially for the time, I don’t feel like it’s as pronounced as it could have been. I was really excited to see that.

Josh: It’s interesting you say that. I won’t go into all the details, cause I didn’t read this far, but just skimming some background of this movie. It was originally conceived as more of a dark drama about prostitution and the difference in class levels in Los Angeles. But somewhere along the way, I guess they went, “you know, what, what if this were cute instead?”

Garrett: Interesting.

David: What if this was nice? What if this was romantic?

Josh: Yeah. What if it wasn’t dark?

Andrew: I really do find that interesting that like it does show what both classes are really like, well, not really like, but it gives you, it gives you-

Josh: This romanticized version of them.

Andrew: Yeah. It really shows the sense of pathos between both characters and by the end you do see that change. You see changes in both characters because you see it physically. So I think that’s, I think it’s a great thing.

Josh: Any favorite parts? Any extra hard laughs?

David: Well, you know, the infamous moment is always when she goes back to the store after they shove her, after they kind of belittle her, she comes back, she’s like, “Hey, you work on commission? Big mistake, huge mistake. There’s a scene in The Office that’s all about Dwight doing that to someone. I asked my wife is that like a cathartic thing for women in general, this is just like upstage some snobby retail workers? And she’s like “A little bit.” To have someone treat you poorly and then get to like, you know, big dog them a little bit afterwards, you know, everybody can relate to that a little bit.

Garrett: Andrew, do you know the Gary Marshall necklace story with the box?

Andrew: That was- when he clapped it. That was like an improvisation.

Garrett: Yeah. Gary Marshall told him to do that. Didn’t tell Julia Roberts because they wanted that genuine laugh reaction. And so that moment there that you have is the moment that he just surprised her and chomped her hand and she had no idea that it was coming. Again, you’re, you’re really trying to deliver that genuine message. Gary Marshall just a genius whenever he does stuff like that .

Andrew: I agree.

Josh: I really liked the part where Richard takes her to the opera and she falls in love with it. He even says something along the lines of people either love or hate opera. He said it more eloquently than I did, and she really loved it. And I liked that because there were a lot of things in the upper-class lifestyle that she kind of clashed with either through not liking it or just not understanding it, but she fit into the opera like a glove. Julia Roberts is so good at those genuine happy reactions you could tell she was just in awe of what she was watching and that just helps sell the character so much better.

Garrett: She was so happy. She almost peed her pants.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then just as she’s charmed you and made you so happy for her, she drops a hilarious line like that and just seals the deal.

Andrew: That’s, I don’t want to say street smart, but it’s clearly the difference between two classes here, because you know a higher class of people, they wouldn’t have said that. “ Oh my God, I peed my pants.”

Josh: You see some of her upbringing or whatever, come through in the moments where she seems to think she has to . Steal the dental floss and steal the piece of bread and Richard Gere- he never says it, which is odd to me, but the reaction is, you can just take that. You don’t, you don’t have to steal the dental floss. You can use it.

David: Yeah. You know, you see this from time to time too. Like, you know, people get so used to their life hacks of like how they get by. You know, she’s not doing it cause she’s like, “Ooh, haha I’m stealing.” It’s like, that’s how she gets by. It’s not like she’s making billions of dollars walking the streets. Any little thing somebody leaves behind, you know, napkins at a table. It’s like, “I got to take those napkins, you know for, for me,” you know, things like that, just like little things to do to get by. It’s tough for those people.

Josh: There was also a running theme where, I don’t know if it was Julia Roberts’ character’s naivety, or if it was how inflation has changed over time, but he got a heck of a deal with having her be at his, as he said it, beck and call for a whole week for $3,000. And she was in just shock of having $3,000. Even 30 years ago, I can’t imagine that’s that much in Los Angeles.

Garrett: You couldn’t get me to spend a full week with somebody now for $3,000, let alone have sex with them and be at their beck and call for them. You gotta up that buddy.

David: That barely gets you through a month in Oklahoma.

Josh: Any other thoughts? I feel like we’ve we’ve hit a lot of good topics.

David: I think so too. This is a pretty good pick Andrew, I got to say.

Josh: It was a pretty good pick.

Garrett: You gotta throw a classic in there. I mean, this is a classic with I feel like good reason.

Josh: Yeah, for your first show of the season, you picked a strong one.

Garrett: Now retire and don’t come back.

Andrew: All right, cool.

Josh: When you come back you better pick a good one.

Andrew: Okay.

Josh: Well, David, tell us about some box office stats for this movie. It was a pretty big hit, I do believe.

David: Interestingly, yes. It won’t sound like a big hit, but I’ll give you a little bit of extra detail. So it opened number one March 23rd of 1990. So this opened just a few weeks after a little David was born. So my mom did probably not . See this in the theater. She probably waited for VHS. It opened to $11.2 million in the number one spot. Number two was The Hunt for Red October with 9 million. Number three was Joe vs. The Volcano with 5.2. Number 4 was Driving Miss Daisy with 3.6 and number five was House Party with 3.2. So you think of 11.2. That’s not too much. And even by the standards of March of 1990, maybe not too much, but the mood-

Garrett: What week was House Party in?

David: House Party was in its third week. Driving Miss Daisy was in its 15th week and still at number three. So that’s pretty good. Pretty Woman would stay consistently in that spot. So it made 11 million its first week, 12 million its second week, 11 million it’s third. So like it basically never went down. People kept going and it was in the top 10 for 15 weeks. So that’s a pretty good run all the way into June. This movie was, you know, in the top 10 and it would finish the year in the number four spot for 1990. Only behind Dances with Wolves at number three, Ghost at number two and Home Alone at number 1. The number five movie of 1990, we’ve reviewed it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s right. Get your pizza. And it’s shell-tastic. We’ve also reviewed Home Alone. So you can check out either of our reviews for two of the other top five movies of . 1990. We’ll have to get on those Ghost and Dances with Wolves reviews at some point. Oh, it was also, it was the number four movie worldwide that year too, which really shows a difference in how things have changed for romantic comedies in terms of worldwide viewership. Because it finished in the United States and Canada with $178 million. Overseas, $285 million. So it made more overseas as a romantic comedy than it did it in the United States. Today, for a romantic comedy to do better overseas than it does in America is not very common. So it was a very good, I would say pretty good hit for 1990 despite what sounds like a not that high opening weekend. And also, little known fact, this was rated R.

Josh: You know, I wondered that out loud because there’s some moments that seems like it would upset a censor.

Garrett: A little bit of nudity in there.

David: Just enough to push it to a rated R in 1990. This would probably be PG -13 today.

Josh: Probably so. Julia Roberts also Oscar nominated and Golden Globe-winning for this role.

David: Successful financially and critically.

Josh: Let’s play the Letterboxd game.

David: Let’s do it. And as you can see, Letterboxd hat is on. Ready.

Josh: Letterboxd hat: Engaged. So, Andrew you missed the last time we played. We did something a little different where I read some of the popular reviews first, just for fun. So I’m going to do that again. We’ll see how this goes. Top review, this is the most liked review. This is three stars and it says “y’all on Letterboxd writing essays about the ethics of this movie. It’s a romcom that came out 28 years ago, honestly, who even cares?

David: That’s even older now. Thirty-something years now.

Josh: Four stars. “Where’s my sugar daddy?” And then this three and a half star review: “The way feminism leaves my body for over two hours whenever I watch this movie.”

*Laughter*

And then, just for fun, here’s a few negative reviews. “I’ve never been more bored in my life,” “boring movie about a gold digger with zero personality.”

Garrett: Whooooa. Shots fired on that one.

Josh: “Literally dump him, babe. You deserve better.”

David: Oh, I dunno about that. You could do a lot worse than Richard Gere. Millionaire Richard Gere. You can do a lot worse.

Josh: This is the last. “I don’t know why I watched. I already knew straight love is demented and boring. Stopped watching with 30 minutes left. I don’t care.”

David: Oh, again, mean-spirited, mean-spirited.

Josh: Mean-spirited, but it got me laughing. Okay. So now, let’s do some quick guesses.

David: I’m going to guess it’s a 3.1.

Andrew: I’m going to go 3.7.

Garrett: Ooh.

Josh: High roller.

Garrett: I was going to hit a 3.5.

Josh: Okay. Okay. We’re all over the map in the three category. Let’s see here. Who’s going to be closest? Oh, we have a direct hit. Somebody sunk the battleship. With 137,000 ratings, this movie comes in at a perfect 3.5. 3.5. So Garrett’s on the board now. I’m on the board. One day we’ll figure out a real system for this game. Put stakes on it or something.

David: Well, yeah, we’ll figure it out. We’ll get like a trophy involved.

Josh: We should get a trophy that would be cool.

Garrett: We should definitely get a trophy. That can happen.

David: Or we get four trophies and-

Josh: Finally my parents will have a reason to be proud.

David: What do we rate it, guys?

Josh: I give it, I’m going to go higher and I think it’s a 4 for me.

Andrew: It’s definitely a 4.

Josh: I think it’s really good for what it is.

David: Yeah, you know, like I said, I’ve seen it so many times at this point, both willingly and unwillingly that like, I have a hard time sort of like gauging what I would have thought if I was watching it for the first time again. So I am also going to give it, I think a 4, because I think it’s solid. If it’s on, why not let it play? That’s how I watched it twice in Disney World.

Garrett: I’m going to just go a slight bit under and I’m going to give it that 3.5.

David: That works.

Josh: Well, that brings our average to a 3.8. Very fun. Okay. Well, that’s it for our Pretty Woman episode. I forgot to mention at the top of the show to check us out everywhere we’re at online, you know, we make this podcast, but that’s not all we make.

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