Pretty Woman is still Disney's best rom-com. A year beyond its 30-year anniversary, Garry Marshall's classic 1990 romantic comedy stars Richard Gere (as businessman Edward Lewis) and Julia Roberts (in a career-defining role as the bubbly Vivian Ward). It follows the now-familiar boy-meets-girl story of a wealthy "Prince Charming" type hiring a beautiful Hollywood escort to pretend to be his girlfriend for a few business outings. The two fall in love, their relationship hitting many beats familiar to those who love romantic comedies.
Originally intended as a dark cautionary tale about class and sex work in Los Angeles, Pretty Woman underwent a strange, indecisive development period. Under its original script title, Three Thousand, the Vivian character was conceived as a jaded, unfeeling drug addict, not the hopeful, starry-eyed woman played by Roberts. Even stranger, casting for the film once considered Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds for the role of Edward, as well as Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Daryl Hannah for Vivian. On a scale from Joan Didion to Eve Babitz, this was a dark, gritty LA firmly on the pessimistic side of Didion. It wasn't until Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-president of Walt Disney Studios, insisted on re-writing the script's dark Pygmalion premise as a light, uplifting LA fairy tale that the morbid moral drama of Three Thousand became Pretty Woman, the model rom-com of the early '90s.
Development-wise, Pretty Woman sounds like a producer's nightmare. But the improvised feel achieved by the movie's messy production is what makes Pretty Woman stand out as Disney's reigning rom-com champion. Though a distant departure from the originally intended Three Thousand story, Pretty Woman carries much of the serious subject matter present in the original script, not least of all the central subject: sex work. No doubt, had Disney initially shot for a fairy-tale rom-com, it would have completely missed out on the overarching maturity that simultaneously elevates Pretty Woman and keeps it grounded in the real adult world.
Thanks to the complementary contrast between the movie's light, playful tone and the script's residual serious subject matter, Pretty Woman serves as one of the most iconic and deeply human romantic comedies of all time. While not every rom-com needs to deal with somber themes to be fully appreciated, the development from dark and gritty to light and bubbly imbues Pretty Woman with a soulful depth not otherwise found in other more monotonously cheerful rom-coms.
This isn't to say that Disney's other romance films are subpar. With such hugely successful rom-coms as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and Enchanted (2007) – to say nothing of such timeless animated classics as Beauty and the Beast (1991), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and Aladdin (1992) – Disney has plenty of standouts in the genre. Yet, Pretty Woman remains its best rom-com, if not the best rom-com overall.