I just finished watching the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which recently had been mentioned in the comments section. This film pairs two of the biggest stars of their time, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. In the 1990s, this was comparable to pairing up Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, albeit both of them look a bit trashy and do not at all come close to the somewhat aristocratic look of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Pretty Woman is a surprisingly well-made film, which was also incredibly successful at the box office, making $463 million on a budget of $14 million dollars. This is an ROI you no longer see in Hollywood. While I was familiar with the name of the film, and the basic premise, or so I thought, there were still a lot of surprises. The main one is the pretty intelligent dual structure of the story.

Pretty Woman tells a modern-day fairy tale. While I had assumed that it tells the story of a high-class escort and her rich client falling in love, the premise is a lot more unrealistic, but it sets up a dynamic that, evidently, can be much more easily exploited commercially. The female protagonist is a cheap street hooker with comically bad manners whereas the male protagonist is an ultra-Chad, an exceptionally good-looking and wealthy business owner who closes billion-dollar deals. He is also a man of culture, in both the original and the modern interpretation of the term. After he got fed up by his high-class girlfriend, he picks up a hooker and because he likes her so much, he pays her to stick around for an entire week. Instead of only using her as a sex kitten, he also uses her as arm candy. Presumably, he brought her along to an business dinner with the rich guy whose company he wants to buy, break apart and sell in pieces, in order to alienate him. There is a passive-aggressive element in Richard Gere’s character but this is not properly exhibited.

Being introduced to the world of the wealthy, the female protagonist start enjoying herself quite a bit. The film sometimes makes on-the-noise social commentary regarding the haves and have-nots, in order to further highlight the gulf between the rich guy and the street hooker he pays 3,000 dollars for, plus expenses, in order to keep him company in his fancy hotel suite. He also buys her heaps of designer clothes and even flies to a different city on a private jet so that they can attend an opera premiere. Long story short, after a week-long emotional roller-coaster, the street hooker finds her Mr Right and they presumably live heavily ever after.

The main audience of this film are women. They get told that even a street hooker can get one of the most desirable men in the world. Taking looks, social class, and money into account, a guy like the male protagonist in this film has probably never existed. Yet, in Pretty Woman he is there for the taking. Julia Roberts’ character did not even have to do much to get him. By being herself she endeared herself to him, and her low-class behavior only appealed to his protector instinct or amuses him. Telling women that there is a great guy out there waiting for them is bad enough, but making a film around a street-hooker getting a handsome and wealthy business man is laughable. In essence, the story is that even a woman of the lowest social status imaginable can get a guy who holds the absolutely highest status in society. It is not difficult to see why Pretty Woman was catnip for female viewers.

There is also a message for men, and this is where I think this film ascends typical romcom slop. It manages to subtly insult men while flattering their ego. The insult, which addresses the female sense of grandiosity, is that even a high-status man may fall in love with a street hooker and hand her his resources. Surely, if you wanted to date a street hooker, being wealthy and handsome would not be prerequisites. Thus, there is an element of humiliation that hateful women surely reveled in when watching this film. No guy wants to even admit that he is dating a slut, and with a hooker it is even worse. More interestingly, though, this film also panders to the men who were dragged into the cinema by their wife or girlfriend. We laugh about the captain-save-a-hoe stereotype. However, men who are trapped in this pattern derive meaning out of it. The vision of turning some (non-literal) whore into a dutiful housewife motivates them, however futile this may be. In this film, the male protagonist achieves exactly that: he takes a literal gutter-trash street whore and achieves remarkable success in turning her into a lady. She quickly learns how to walk, move, talk, and behave in public, yet still shows the occasional not-to-crass behavior to remind the viewer that the transformation is not complete yet. In the captain-save-a-hoe league, turning a streetwalker into a lady is the toughest challenge there is. Yet, this film tells you that it is possible, so why are you to complain about your wife or girlfriend having, for instance, problems with managing her money or keeping her legs together? Maybe you would not struggle so much if you had more money or looked better? Thus, a failed save-a-hoe project is due to male insufficiency not due to the woman being beyond help.

Pretty Woman is a very well-crafted film that manages to appeal to both deluded women and blue-pilled men. The story is utterly ridiculous, yet by being on-the-nose, it appeals to a very wide audience. I think this film is worth watching for the plot alone as a lot of thought went into it. For a romantic comedy, the level of depth is quite surprising. Compared to today’s Hollywood sloop, this film is probably the equivalent of high literature. It is probably also the most unrealistic romcom ever made. It surely is no coincidence that it is also one of the commercially most successful films in this genre.