Deborah Lipp

Runaway Bride (1999) 4/10
Out of ideas, columnist Ike Graham (Richard Gere) uses a story he hears from a drunk in a bar—about a woman who repeatedly leaves men at the altar—as the basis for his USA Today column. The woman, Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts), humiliated upon reading about herself, writes a scathing letter to the editor which gets Ike fired. Seeking “vindication,” Ike comes to Maggie’s small town to write about her.

Runaway Bride is a vile movie, and watching it is some kind of Christmas punishment for goofing off in front of the TV and watching whatever crap TNT throws at me. Ike Graham is a nasty, misogynist guy. In the opening scene it’s established that, since a deadline is looming, everyone expects him to write yet another column condemning women as evil bitches who are out to get him. The story he hears about Maggie fits the agenda he already had.

This is ugly stuff, and I wondered how the film would handle it. There’s the faintest whiff of feminist sensibility in the opening, as women will have none of his bullshit, and his only friends appear to be his ex-wife (Rita Wilson) and her husband (Hector Elizondo). It’s pretty harsh if your only friend is your ex-wife; it kind of says “I can befriend you only if I first get away from you.” So to open with “you are hateful to women” and then have him get called on it, it seemed like maybe they were going to deal with, y’know, hating women, and maybe that was why I kept watching.

Except they don’t deal with it. » Read more..