Pretty Woman (Summary)

Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) is a whore. So is Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts). Only she works on Hollywood Boulevard and he stays at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
"We both screw people for money." Of course, Cyndi Lauper sang that "Money Changes Everything." And in its original, darkly cynical incarnation, the script for Pretty Woman (which could've been called Working Girl ) was called 3000, because it was about the money that makes men and women unequal. Of course, it is beyond the scope (or intention) Pretty Woman to sharpen this into an ironic or satirical point. Vivian (the designated moral superior) compares what Edward does -- buying companies, dismantling them, and then selling the pieces for profit -- to stealing cars and selling the parts. This same lesson appears to have been lost on the makers of Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman (the motion picture) does not. In this movie, the clothes make the man (or woman) and if you cry at the opera, it proves you've got a cultured soul.
Pretty Woman brackets its urban fable with appearances by a black street hustler/panhandler/chorus, who strides through the picture hollering stuff like: "This is Hollywood where people come to fulfill their dreams! Some dreams come true and some don't! Believe in your dreams!" To prowl the streets of Hollywood day and night shouting at people? Pretty Woman doesn't wanna know...
Pretty Woman can't handle the contradictions it raises. At one point, Vivian speaks for Disney (and audiences) when tells Edward, flat-out: "I want the fairy tale." Vivian herself recognizes as much.
Edward becomes the movie's hero when he prevents an associate from raping Vivian and decides not to commit a comparably despicable business transaction at work. Maybe Pretty Woman isn't really a tainted romantic comedy after all, but a sort of latent horror film about the ethical/economic decay of America.