Posted 9:05 p.m. Mon., 02.08.10 - Perhaps I’ve prematurely entered my curmudgeon stage, but I find the endless promos for Garry Marshall’s “Valentine’s Day” more off-putting than enticing. A romantic comedy populated by a seeming infinitude of stars (e.g., Julia Roberts, Jessicas Biel and Alba, Taylors Swift and Lautner, Anne Hathaway, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Ashton Kutcher), “Valentine’s Day” seems of an irritating piece with such other Marshall “entertainments” as “Runaway Bride” and “The Princess Diaries,” glossy fairytales of love thwarted and, after much contrived complication, finally fulfilled.

Marshall isn’t devoid of talent: His “The Flamingo Kid,” made early in his feature-film career, remains a fine (if falsely promising) work, and he’s a surprisingly effective actor for other directors (see Albert Brooks’ “Lost in America”). But Marshall scrubs most of his films so clean of reality’s grit that they become antiseptic fantasies. Compare, for example, the stage version of Terence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” with Marshall’s film adaptation, “Frankie and Johnny” – the truncated title is the least of the many losses in translation.

The immensely successful “Pretty Woman” is Marshall’s signature film in this regard: Conceived as a drama, with a downbeat, defiantly anti-romantic conclusion, it eventually metamorphosed into a light comedy with the most Hollywood-style ending imaginable. I’ve not read the original script, and there’s no predicting whether a film more faithful to its spirit would have been superior to “Pretty Woman,” but I doubt that it could have been worse.

Of course, from a purely commercial perspective, mine is a minority view: “Pretty Woman” grossed $463 million worldwide, according to IMDb, and it’s now regarded in some benighted circles as a classic romance, checking in at No. 21 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest love stories (besting such also-rans as No. 28 “The Shop Around the Corner,” No. 55 “Reds” and No. 60 “To Have and Have Not”).

To “commemorate” the imminent 20th anniversary of “Pretty Woman,” here’s my review of the film, which ran in the March 28, 1990, edition of the Riverfront Times. The piece’s contrarian take on the film makes clear that I’m actually a curmudgeon of long standing. The review was entitled “In Dreams”:

Dream a little dream with me:

Pretend, just for a moment, that you’re rich, a fabulously wealthy corporate raider. And that you look like Richard Gere.

OK.

Now pretend that you’re in a Lotus, cruising on Hollywood Boulevard, lost and looking for Beverly Hills. And that you ask directions of a hooker. And that she looks like Julia Roberts.

OK.

Now pretend that you take her to your hotel and she’s just so damned winsome and charming, in her rough, unpolished way – you know, like a diamond – that you decide to keep her for a week while you decimate another corporation.

OK.

Now pretend that you take her to the opera, which you adore, and she cries because she’s so incredibly moved by the experience. And that you fall in love.

OK.

Now pretend that you live happily ever after.

Not OK? You don’t buy this? This doesn’t seem, well, real?

Welcome to Hollywood, land of dreams.

Meet “Pretty Woman,” figment of its imagination.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh: “Pretty Woman” has its light-comic moments, even a few genuine laughs, and the film’s Cinderella plot – a borrowing it acknowledges with knowing ironic references – has an obvious archetypal appeal. And – let’s face it – we want that happy ending: Given a choice, we inevitably choose fantasy over fact.

After all, it’s only a movie.

But that’s a lame defense. The pernicious materialism and unequal, exploitive relationships that “Pretty Woman” implicitly – hell, enthusiastically – endorses are very much a part of the real world, but by placing them in this fairytale context, they appear altogether innocent. The movie attempts a self-critique by having its corporate raider appear to reform – he decides to help run the company he buys rather than breaking it apart – but it’s really a self-justification: Making great gobs of money is allowable if you build something at the same time. What you manufacture – whether chemical defoliants or Stealth bombers – doesn’t appear relevant: Wealthy industrialists are OK; wealthy financiers aren’t. Talk about your fine distinctions.  But, hey, it’s only a movie.

And didn’t Julia Roberts look fine? And weren’t those clothes fabulous? And wouldn’t it be great to be really, really rich?

Sweet dreams.

What time would you like your wakeup call?