Romantic comedy is largely about oppositions, and the eventual collapse of those oppositions into a happy ending. Which suggests that those oppositions weren't oppositions after all. In Gary Marhsall's Runaway Bride, Maggie (Julia Roberts) and Ike (Richard Gere), are earmarked early on for such a happy ending by how opposite they seem to be: city boy and country girl; misogynist and man-eater; harried freelance journalist and sedentary 9-5 hardware store manager; etc. This is all established in about four minutes. Underneath those tags, however, are two people who are both defined by their manner when the clock's ticking down: Maggie walking down the aisle and Ike with 15 minutes left to write a story. Which is how Runaway Bride opens, with Maggie running and Ike getting a second-hand version of her running and then writing it into his column. Which is the initial complication that draws them together: Maggie disagrees with Ike's write-up of her vehemently enough that he's 'assigned' to cover her pending wedding. If she runs, he's vindicated; if she doesn't, he loses this country girl he's falling for. It all gets a little complicated, which is nice. What isn't so nice is that Ike's assignment feels a little contrived, a little too functional. This is a direct result of there being no sharp turning point into the country for him, but more of a gradual and inevitable curve, shaped not by dramatic events but by the necessity of reuniting Gere and Roberts on-screen for another Pretty Woman, a pressure Pretty Woman alumn Gary Marshall must have been acutely aware of. It shows. Since then and now though things have changed a bit, however. Most recently, there's been My Best Friend's Wedding and Forces of Nature, both offering non-traditional 'comedic' endings which skew our expectations a bit as concerns wedding-movies, both of them suggesting that the happiest ending isn't always the one we want to be the happy ending. Runaway Bride could have used this to its advantage, but it chooses not to. Instead it relies a bit desperately on Gere and Roberts to turn mediocre writing into magic. Granted, Joan Cusack is wonderful in her habitual sidekick role, adding humor and a little tenderness to the proceedings, but in the final analysis it's Gere and Roberts. There's simply no room for anyone else, not even Maggie's current betrothed, Coach Bob. And Coach Bob even seems aware of this in his military-athletic way, bowing gracefully out for Ike. And again, it's a little bit of a set-up, but at least this time it's supported by convention, by the need for comedic reversal: Maggie, habitually running away from men she's attracted to, will instinctively cling to the one she's repulsed by. She has to. The genre demands it. Similarly, Ike has to be the groom that no other groom was for Maggie, do what none of the others did: chase her, literally or figuratively. Like the boy who brought the king water in Fisher King. In Runaway Bride's favor, however, there is at least the suggestion of a larger narrative functioning, a little tension over whether Maggie will become part of Ike's story (another sacrifice to the dailies) or whether he'll become part of hers (another groom left with a lot of cake left to eat alone), which, in a Gere/Roberts movie not predicated on a Roy Orbison ditty, is finally all we have to cling to. (c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones
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