In the movie “Pretty Woman,” a woman wonders what the movie was about before she realized the movie was about Khalid from “Seinfeld.” It’s about as witty and realistic a bit of meta-humor that you’ll ever see. In fact, it’s so accurate, that I’m actually not surprised that I’m not the only one to realize this. No doubt many other people had this same realization on the first viewing of the movie and still marvel at the movie.
But it’s not just the quote in the movie that has led to the point where people talk about “Seinfeld”The Phantom Menace” as being that “pretty similar.” But how they are that similar.
As the movie opens, it’s fantasy. George is a film director, Miranda, is his directorial protege, and the movie’s fantasy is about them making a movie together. However, this isn’t what happens. George is nagged by his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) to come out to her after a failed attempt to meet Miranda’s parents, and a mutual friend of George and Miranda, Keith, (Chris Elliott) helps him set up the date. That is, until his brother tells him to go to it, that his friends would have him with women when he is too old for them, and that he doesn’t even want to be with a film director.
From there, George and Michael (Leonardo DiCaprio) quickly become enemies, and Michael are lured into a trap set by the clowns, and try to take Michael’s soul. However, Michael has been promised to another, and he breaks free and kills the clowns in the name of revenge. All this leads to the discovery of that Miranda’s dad is really her grandfather, but he doesn’t know it yet.
So they team up and kill the original clowns, which we can presume was a pretty clever way to set up the story. Their first encounter is a brief one, however, and George and Michael barely meet. They are separated by a few years when George meets and falls in love with a woman named Stephanie (Jessica Alba). She’s played by the wonderful Penelope Cruz, who is a woman full of surprises.
What I found to be the most interesting part of the movie is that the young Julia (Jennifer Aniston) had very little idea about who George was or what his life was like. So it’s hard to explain how the film would have worked if he was introduced earlier in the story, or if he was some kind of mystery element. However, it’s obvious that the movie was written based on the story outline that George wrote to introduce Julia to his friend Julia (Jodie Foster), but no one seems to recall who George was and how he was involved in the movie. In any case, he was very much in his element in the film, which made him an ideal choice for the part.
The movie was written well, and with a lot of heart. As Julia told her father (Robert De Niro), she knew that if she came out and told him that she was gay, he would be devastated. It’s a difficult, yet loving, scene, and is one of the better scenes in the movie.
This movie wasn’t exactly where the three main characters wanted to end up, but it was where they ended up and it was what it took to make them successful. This movie doesn’t really follow the plot of the books or the other movies, but it was so true to the books that I wonder if the writers did it just to capture George’s character or the way the characters spoke to each other.
