Runaway Bride

**

Cast: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere

Director: Garry Marshall

Rating: PG

Review: Russell Baillie

As the opening titles come up a horse carrying a wedding-frocked Julia Roberts gallops away. On the soundtrack U2 sing 'I Still Haven't Found What I Am Looking For.'

She's a runaway bride, geddit? No, they don't come any more obvious than this. And while there was potential for popcorn fun in this most blatantly Hollywood of constructs - get stars from 1990 hit Pretty Woman back together for romantic comedy, laugh all way to bank - it's a strained, plodding affair.

While Pretty Woman at least had the ability to sell us its unlikely set-up, the story to this heaps contrivance upon convolution and there isn't a convincing character - apart from Joan Cusack as Roberts' sidekick - in the same time zone. Yes, Roberts and Gere do generate a certain spark, but all around them things just fizzle.

The set-up has Gere as Ike Graham, a New York columnist for USA Today. One day, desperate for a subject, Ike finds his deadline inspiration from a guy in a bar who tells him about a woman from his hometown who repeatedly jilts her grooms at the altar.

Ike duly embellishes this into an anti-feminist think-piece. Problem is, he's got his facts wrong and when runaway bride Maggie Carpenter (Roberts) complains, Ike is given his marching orders.

What else is there to do but pursue Carpenter to her small town of Hale, where she runs the family hardware business, to seek vindication by penning a freelance magazine article about her. As you do.

Thus begins the opposites-attract tango, complicated by Maggie's impending nuptials to the school football coach, the latest in a long line of archetype ex-fiances (rocker, scientist, one she sent into the priesthood). And then there are the side issues that flare and disappear like Maggie's Dad's drinking, and the ribbing she gets for turning her frequent walks up the aisle into a sprint event.

And as a sop to Pretty Woman fans it rewrites some scenes, like the Beverly Hills shopping spree, here shifted to the local bridal wear outlet. It also features some of the same supporting cast among the cut-outs which surround the leads.

Roberts does her usual stretch from goofy to radiant, and a loosened-up Gere at least seems to be enjoying his payday. And boy, they've both got great hair, huh?

For those who want it, there probably won't be a more wholesome comedy until these two get back together again in 2008 (by then he'll be a used-car salesman, she'll be a neurosurgeon). But as for the rest of it, it's hard not to feel that, in all of this, only the horse had the right idea.