Review of Pretty Woman, directed by Garry Marshall

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

One things I’m trying to do in order to combat this is to watch movies that catch my interest in the moment. Sometimes it can be a highbrow intellectual movie, or it can be a trashy romcom that might not actually be any good. But if I’m in the mood for it, I press play and watch it.

And that’s how I ended up watching Pretty Woman. I’d been meaning to watch it for years, but then one day it popped up on my Netflix account as “leaving soon,” I kind of shrugged, and then I ended up watching it all the way through.

Let’s get into the review!

When an escort is hired to accompany a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, sparks unexpectedly fly.

Our male lead in this movie is Edward Lewis, who works in Los Angeles and is very wealthy because of his corporate raider status. At the start of the movie, he leaves a business party and ends up in the red light district. He didn’t intend to go there, is lost, as he took his lawyer’s car, and he has no idea how to use the stick shift.

Vivian Ward is the one to approach him that night and help him. She offers to drive him to a fancy hotel in LA, he agrees, and then he ends up hiring her for the entire night. Things seem to go south at first, but they end up having sex and Edward asks her to accompany him for the week.

He has a handful of business events to attend to. They agree on a price, then he gives her some more money to buy the right kind of clothes to walk around in. She heads to Rodeo Drive to purchase some outfits, but the saleswomen there turn her away because of her appearance. She goes back to the hotel and asks the manager for assistance, and he gets a salesperson to get her a cocktail dress for a business dinner.

The manager, Barney, also teaches Vivian proper manners and etiquette for the table. When Edward sees her next, he’s shocked at how much she looks different and acts, then brings her to the business dinner. However, the grandfather and grandson they meet (who Edward wants to acquire the company from) are displeased at the way he wants to do business.

That night Edward spills the beans about his personal and professional lives to Vivian. The next thing they do together is a polo match, and his lawyer informs him that he thinks Vivian is a spy and plant to get more information. He tells his lawyer about their arrangement instead, which prompts the guy to go ask her for her services—despite being married.

Vivian gets mad at Edward because he told the guy in the first place, then he apologizes and admits he was jealous. He uses a private jet to take her to see a show at the San Francisco opera (which, ironically, is about a prostitute loving a rich man), and Vivian ends up kissing him and having sex. When he falls asleep, she admits that she loves him out loud.

With the week coming to an end, Edward offers to buy Vivian a condo and give her an allowance. He also promises that he will visit her regularly, but then she feels spited because of how she actually loves him. Edward goes to meet with morse and agrees to work with him, despite at the business dinner acting like he would completely restructure the company, and his lawyer gets angry because of it.

He seeks Edward out and finds Vivian instead, choosing to take his anger out on her by attempting to rape her. Edward arrives just then, punches the guy, and fires him on the spot. With his business done, Edward asks Vivian to stay one night because he wants her there, and she says no.

Vivian goes home to pack her belongings. She wants to move to San Francisco and start over, then tells her roommate she has potential and gives her some money. That inspires the girl to leave sex work behind and go to beauty school. Edward heads to the apartment but Vivian as already left, then goes to see Vivian.

He asks her what comes next after her childhood fantasy of a knight saving her, and she says she’ll save him right back and ends up kissing him. The movie ends there.

Overall Thoughts

I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this movie, which is a phrase I find myself repeating nowadays. I watch a lot of movies where I don’t know the synopsis upfront and kind of just press play. However, I did enjoy this movie, despite it definitely failing the Bechdel test. Is this a movie you want to be inspired as a feminist? Not entirely, but we don’t watch similar Korean dramas for the same reason.

That said, I found this to be quite the entertaining movie in the end. I don’t know if I would return to it, as it was a bit cheesy and cliche in a way I didn’t care for at times, but I had a good time watching it that night.

I say go see this one if you’re interested and haven’t already. Movies are meant to be seen, not read about.

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