RUNAWAY BRIDE (1999) *** At the point where Richard Gere has that psychedelic cockerel hairdo, my wife goes "You know, he actually looks pretty good." Well yeah, he's Richard Gere . I like the stuff the writers have his character write-or maybe he wrote it, because he's Richard Gere. They never allow you room for mistake: this is a Hollywood romantic comedy. The actors are simply there to make it work. And they do. Julia Roberts is even better, a character everyone can easily fall in love with in that parallel, etheric world of movie watching, and you look at her lips scrunching into various formations and faces and attitude, and it's easy to see why she earns the big bucks, too. It's not all that difficult to write something good and warm like this, but these writers do a special job. The old friends dialogue between Julia and Joan Cusack, and not just because of the actresses, because the writers pumped very real people and too real observations on the human condition into the scene. It's a brilliant scene in a very good movie. I like all the Grateful Dead stuff on the side too, but it would have been annoying if they didn't know what they were talking about, or if it was in a lesser milieu, or if it was glued on just to amaze the cool people. I pretty much always enjoy films like this unless they're really poorly done, but this is one of the better ones.
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