Light fare in a much darker context than you'd expect

Rating: 4/10 (8 April 2020)

'Pretty Woman' is kind of a blend of 'Cinderella' on the one hand and 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' on the other, albeit without any sort of family dynamic or any pretense to honesty about the dark side of human nature. What's left doesn't amount to anything more than a yuppie fantasy, a time-wasting crowd pleaser memorable only for finally rocketing the career of Julia Roberts into orbit. At best, the glamorous and unrealistic portrayal of prostitution enraged feminists, whose own angry demeanor has put them off to men and whose worthless Women's Studies degrees have rendered them barely unemployable, thus putting them one step away from the streets themselves.
At worst, 'Pretty Woman' marks the start of the entry of softcore for women - previously confined to bodice-ripper novels read in dank closets - into the respectable mainstream. Throughout the next couple of decades it was followed up by any number of equally bland clones (notably by Richard Curtis), paralleled at the lower level by "Trash TV" and at the higher level by 'Outlander,' the trend culminating of course in the '50 Shades of Grey' sensation in 2011.
'Pretty Woman' is a hot mess, an important relic of Hollywood and pop-culture history and part of the puzzle to understanding how the entertainment industry has helped metamorphose the mother (chiefly) of the family from guardian of manners and traditional mores into defender of gay rights and champion of perpetual childhood (the "coddled millennials" we're always hearing about trying to "find themselves"). Ironically, while this is the sort of tripe serious film buffs would have scuffed at upon its initial release, it's difficult now to see how it could be of interest to anyone but a serious student of cinema and pop culture. However, I would keep it as far away from my own family as possible.