Roberts & Gere in Altared States By Rita Kempley Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 30, 1999

Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in "Runaway Bride." (Paramount) Director: Garry Marshall Cast: Julia Roberts; Richard Gere; Joan Cusack; Hector Elizondo; Rita Wilson Running Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes Contains bile-provoking cuteness and a few risque comments from a grandmother who ought to know better

Can no groom tame this skittish filly?

Enter Richard Gere, who played millionaire Pygmalion to Roberts's whoring Galatea in 1990's smash "Pretty Woman." Without question, Gere's up to the job again in this mindless, shamelessly commercial reunion with Roberts and director Garry Marshall. Clearly, there's something about the pretty woman that puts the pretty man at ease.

Gere may be pining for his main man, the Dalai Lama, but he's plenty sassy as Ike Graham. Ike, a chauvinistic journalist for USA Today, savages Maggie in an ire- and error-filled column and is subsequently fired. When a magazine asks Ike to cover Maggie's fourth wedding, he accepts in hopes of both salvaging his career and rebuking the man-eating Marylander. Upon arriving in Maggie's picture-perfect home town of Hale, Ike is reminded of Mayberry. Actually Hale looks more like Main Street in Disneyland, quaint but without the patina that reality brings. It shares that with the cliched screenplay by Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott ("Three Men and a Little Lady"), which mirrors the artifice of the overly precious setting.

In keeping with the genre's traditions, Maggie despises Ike on first sight. To her dismay, she is in the minority. Ike fits into the community as easily as Cinderella's foot slid into her glass slipper. Before long he not only knows everybody by first name, but also he's befriended Maggie's long-suffering father (Paul Dooley), her jock of a fiance (Christopher Meloni) and her endearing best friend, Peggy (Joan Cusack).

Given Ike's warm reception, maybe Maggie isn't as popular with her neighbors as she appears to be. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case. Everybody melts in the presence of that solar smile, and even her jilted beaux (one of whom has since become a priest) have forgiven her. This makes not one whit of sense, of course, but then neither does the characters' behavior.

Maggie, an independent young woman who manages her father's hardware store, is also the town handywoman. When she's not fleeing her banns, she stays in shape by kick-boxing. She seems pretty sure of herself all around, but Ike, in his psychiatric mode, determines that she has yet to define her personal boundaries and fears she'll never find her true self if she marries beforehand.

"You want a man who'll lead you down the beach with his hand over your eyes so you can feel and discover the sand, a man who'll wake you up at dawn just bursting with energy to find out what you'll say," coos Ike. Apparently, he's convinced that small-town types think getting up early is a real turn-on.

Never mind that finding a man really shouldn't have anything to do with finding yourself. But cynical big-city woman-haters don't turn into cheesy quiche-eaters either, except in fairy tales like "Runaway Bride."

Fans of Gere and Roberts may not care about the movie's many implausibilities and other shortcomings because the stars do indeed sparkle like the bubbles in wedding champagne. But the rest of us will find the vintage too sweet.