--- description: The Julia Roberts classic was released on March 23, 1990 title: Pretty Woman Turns 25: How the Julia Robert Movie Ruined Rom-Coms image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ab8ee061ec4511/698783b4524fc0d48edece87/pretty-woman.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How _Pretty Woman_ Ruined the Rom-Com ## Video: The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far) [Watch (HLS stream): The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/S3M25t5U.m3u8) (4:16)  _Published 2012-05-17. TIME movie critic, Richard Corliss lists his top films of the millennium (Thus Far). For the full, list go to time.com/entertainment_  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 23, 2015 2:00 PM CUT  Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in a scene from the film 'Pretty Woman', 1990. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in a scene from the film 'Pretty Woman', 1990.Hulton Archive/Getty Images  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 23, 2015 2:00 PM CUT Twenty-five years ago, a new film reinvigorated a genre and seemed to point a way forward. _Pretty Woman_, released on March 23, 1990, established Julia Roberts, already an Oscar nominee for her role in _Steel Magnolias_, as the queen of the romantic comedy. But perhaps more resoundingly, it established the “high-concept”—the story that could be told in a clear, concise logline—as the order of the day for the genre. Romantic comedies of the past had relied on little but chemistry. _Pretty Woman_ established the appeal of extraordinarily high bars to clear for the couple at a film’s center. It was an innovation that brought the genre short-term gains, but long-term obsolescence. It’s hard to give _Pretty Woman_ too much credit for its originality, considering that, at its center, it’s yet another revision of George Bernard Shaw’s _Pygmalion_ (which also provided grist for the musical _My Fair Lady_). And yet there’s a real frisson to the story of Los Angeles prostitute Vivian (played by Roberts), who is taken on as a client by wealthy traveling businessman Edward (Richard Gere) and taught to fit into polite society. After a few obstacles, the pair end up wiser about one another’s worlds, and, more importantly, together. It seems quotidian today, after not merely endless replays on cable but multiple films that got even closer to fantasy, but the _Pretty Woman_ plot is so outlandish as to be a little funny, taken on its own: Edward realizes, after only a couple of days with Vivian, that he no longer cares about his job and decides to tank a business deal. Sure! The whole thing was significantly softened up from [the first draft](http://www.ew.com/article/2001/03/30/tale-two-endings "undefined"), in which Vivian was a crack addict whom Edward leaves at film’s end to return to his girlfriend. The final version was much cleaner, if much less realistic. The revision process made Edward and Vivian into guileless figures able to overcome any obstacle, but not every audience member was along for the ride. [Wrote TIME’s critic Richard Corliss:](http://time.com/vault/issue/1990-04-02/page/86/ "undefined") “No one has yet made a romantic comedy in which, say, a toxic-waste dumper falls for a terrorist hijacker. \[…\] But _Pretty Woman_ comes close to finding the least admirable characters to build a feel-good movie around.” Corliss went on to cite, as evidence against the movie, its fusing of utterly predictable beats with age-of-irony noxious characters. His headline, summing up the movie’s decadence and its familiarity, was perfect: “Sinderella.” But this merger of old and new worked, to many moviegoers, in the movie’s favor. Roberts was nominated for her second Oscar, this time for Best Actress, for _Pretty Woman_; the film came in fourth in the domestic box-office tally that year, a rarity for a film released outside summer or the holidays. The number-one hit of 1990 was _Ghost_, a romantic drama that assayed the only barrier greater than that between prostitute and john. Roberts’s post-_Pretty Woman_ years were a series of ups and downs: She worked in several films that sought to replicate whatever it was that had made her 1990 turn so electric. When Corliss [wrote about](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,972305,00.html "undefined") Roberts’s 1991 film _Sleeping With the Enemy_, he indulged suspicions that “Roberts has been more lucky than smart,” noting “an emptiness at the core of her charm.” That perceived emptiness allowed Roberts to outlast the other actresses he cited as her superiors, including Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer**,** as she brought much willingness and little spiky resistance to projects whose main draw was an out-there conceit; in more generic rom-coms, like _I Love Trouble_, she added little (reviewing that film, Corliss [called](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,981027,00.html "undefined") Roberts “a Lamborghini that few people know how to drive”). And the less said about her mid-1990s experimentation with period drama, in _Michael Collins_ and _Mary Reilly_, the better. But once Roberts embraced her role as a path-breaking star of a very specific sort of movie, she rose again. In _My Best Friend’s Wedding_, Roberts played a near-demonic figure, a restaurant critic bent on sabotaging the nuptials of her pal so that she could cash in on a marriage pact they’d made years before. She was unsympathetic in the extreme—and, more notably, playing her part in a romantic comedy with a concept so high it could give the casual viewer altitude sickness. It was a hit, and restored Roberts to prominence in a genre she was helping to define with her willingness to go to the edge. A few years later came _Notting Hill,_ in which Roberts played a world-famous actress crossing the fame divide to date a bookstore owner, and _Runaway Bride,_ in which she re-teamed with Gere to play a woman terrified of marriage. Gere was the journalist profiling her…who ends up wanting to marry her, despite her impulses and his job. Roberts’ willingness to take on relatively outré plots, at least for a genre historically designed to get men and women together by film’s end with only the cutest of obstacles, and her ability to sell lines with a coltish smile or a quivering upper lip, made her a star. It also changed the game. In 2007, TIME’s Belinda Luscombe [reported on the end of the movie romance](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1651506,00.html "undefined"), citing _Notting Hill_ writer Richard Curtis, who said: “\[I\]f you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you’re accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental.” In 2007’s big-hit movie romance, _Knocked Up_, one sees the fundamentals of a Roberts hit: A preposterously unbridgeable divide crossed, ultimately, against the bounds of good sense. Katherine Heigl, that film’s star, criticized the film’s writing for making her seem “humorless and uptight.” She was no less uptight than was Roberts doggedly seeking to ruin a wedding or, 25 years ago, refusing kisses on the mouth, but the blueprint of bizarre-seeming boundaries between stars was now so firmly established as to seem invisible. Heigl may not have thought the divide between the characters made _Knocked Up_ funny, but the laughing audience didn’t notice. Today, the romantic comedy is yet more moribund than it was in 2007; after the flukey success of _Knocked Up_ and Roberts’s transition into dramas, no one has taken the crown. Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone have both done one fairly down-to-earth entry (respectively, _Silver Linings Playbook_ and _Crazy, Stupid, Love_) and then had their fill. Maybe that’s for the best. For a ten-to-15 year span following _Pretty Woman_, the genre was defined by more-and-more excessive spins on how to keep stars apart. (In 2005, the putative rom-com queen filed her last entry in the genre with _Just Like Heaven_, in which she played a ghost. It was _Ghost_… but a comedy, and a signal that the high-decadent phase of romantic comedy had reached its terminus.) As the field lies fallow, maybe a new Roberts will assert herself and indulge audiences’ taste for baroque obstacles and unrealistic final pairings. Or maybe there’s one more pairing left in Roberts and Gere—though given the places they’ve been, it’s hard to imagine where they’d go next. One possibility, suggested by the success of lower-fi films like _Silver Linings Playbook_, is that a quarter-century may be long enough for the trend started by _Pretty Woman_ to last—and the rom-coms of the future may have more to do with conditions found on planet Earth. **_Read TIME’s original review of_** **Pretty Woman** **_, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Sinderella](http://time.com/vault/issue/1990-04-02/page/86/ "undefined") _Read next:_ [_12 Fascinating Facts to Celebrate_ ](http://time.com/3755555/pretty-woman-25-anniversary-julia-roberts-richard-gere/?iid=time%5Freadnext "undefined")[Pretty Woman_’s 25th Anniversary_](http://time.com/3755555/pretty-woman-25-anniversary-julia-roberts-richard-gere/?iid=time%5Freadnext "undefined") ### See the 20 Most Successful Romantic Comedies  20\. The Break-Up - $118,703,275 Universal  19\. 50 First Dates - $120,908,074 Columbia  18\. Something's Gotta Give - $124,728,738 Columbia  17\. Mr. Deeds - $126,293,452 Columbia  16\. Sleepless in Seattle - $126,680,884 TriStar  15\. My Best Friend's Wedding - $127,120,029 TriStar  14\. Sweet Home Alabama - $127,223,418 Disney  13\. Coming to America - $128,152,301 Paramount  12\. Silver Linings Playbook - $132,092,958 Weinstein Company  11\. Bringing Down the House - $132,716,677 Disney  10 As Good as It Gets - $148,478,011 Sony Pictures  9\. Knocked Up - $148,768,917 Universal  8\. Runaway Bride - $152,257,509 Paramount  7\. Sex and the City - $152,647,258 New Line Cinema  6\. The Proposal - $163,958,031 Disney  5\. There's Something About Mary - $176,484,651 20th Century Fox  4\. Pretty Woman - $178,406,268 Buena Vista  3\. Hitch - $179,495,555 Columbia  2\. What Women Want - $182,811,707 Paramount  My Big Fat Greek Wedding is back! IFC [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/?sl%5Fautoplay=true&xid=spl-fullbrief-article "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3745374/pretty-woman-julia-roberts/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3745374/pretty-woman-julia-roberts/"},"headline":"How Pretty Woman Ruined the Rom-Com","datePublished":"2015-03-23T14:00:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:05:03.662Z","description":"The Julia Roberts classic was released on March 23, 1990","url":"https://time.com/3745374/pretty-woman-julia-roberts/","keywords":["movies","Julia Roberts"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ab8ee061ec4511/698783b4524fc0d48edece87/pretty-woman.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd4ab8ee061ec4511/698783b4524fc0d48edece87/pretty-woman.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Richard Gere And Julia Roberts In 'Pretty Woman'","caption":"Richard Gere And Julia Roberts In 'Pretty Woman'","creditText":"Hulton Archive/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3745374/pretty-woman-julia-roberts/","name":"How Pretty Woman Ruined the Rom-Com"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)","description":"TIME movie critic, Richard Corliss lists his top films of the millennium (Thus Far). 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