A slick advertisement for prostitution that lies and lies.

Rating: 1/10 (24 April 2005)

In "Pretty Woman" Richard Gere plays an executive attempting to acquire a shipyard so that he can tear the company into small pieces and sell it off for scrap. While he is about this dirty business, he hires a street-walking hooker played by Julia Roberts for companionship. All of this is believable until the purely-for-hire relationship with the whore turns into a warm intimate relationship that seems to change the businessman's character so much for the better that he reverses his decision to decimate the company he is preying upon and even proposes marriage to the hooker.
The makers of this film would like us to forget everything we have ever learned about prostitution  that it takes place in an environment of corruption and is itself a cause of corruption, misery and disease  in favor of the absurd notion that sex for hire is a convenient, appealing and pleasurable way for couples to meet and establish a love relationship.
The producers were very clever in hiring deadpan actor Richard Gere to present their false point of view to innocent viewers, because everything else about the movie smirks at the jades in the audience, not too subtly concealing its lewd in-jokes and boorish innuendo beneath a paper thin veneer of polish and elegance. Worst of all, it openly and chivalrously takes the part of prostitutes against those who may disapprove of them.
"Pretty Woman" is the type of manipulative movie that does everything it can to sell the audience on its values, without making an effort to distinguish between itself and real life. For suggestible viewers, it presents a danger that they may imitate what they see on screen, and then find out too late that real life is not anywhere near so pleasant or easy when it comes to dealing with low life criminals or the vulgar and licentious rich.
I once heard a very successful and well regarded professor of screen writing remark that "it's much better to be rich than to be poor." Not if it means flaunting a love of vice in this disgusting manner.