Runaway Bride

(Paramount)

Garry Marshall's film reprises the casting of Pretty Woman but can't reproduce even the meager virtues of his tawdry 1990 hit. Julia Roberts moves from prostitution to that other bastion of institutionalized sex, marriage, as Maggie Carpenter, a small-time girl who's left three grooms at the altar. Richard Gere is Ike Graham, a desperate columnist for USA Today who writes Maggie's story up with fabricated facts and gets fired when she blows the whistle. When Ike shows up in Maggie's home town on the eve of her fourth foray into marital bliss, what follows is as implausible as it is inevitable.