Paramount Pictures tries to recapture that magic moment by reuniting the lead actors of Pretty Woman with director Garry Marshall in Runaway Bride, a kind of inversion of the original Cinderella concept. Roberts plays a hardware-store owner who's become famous for leaving grooms at the altar. Richard Gere, her fairy-tale rescuer in Pretty Woman, becomes her pursuer, a cynical New York columnist who visits her small Maryland town hoping to have his worst beliefs about womankind justified. They've reversed it, see? Roberts dreamed of going to the altar in the first movie, and now she can't say, "I do!" Get it?

Unfortunately for Paramount, Marshall, and everyone associated with Runaway Bride, someone forgot the key element: the leading man. As Prince Charming in Pretty Woman, Gere didn't need to have much personality--the prince is the object of fantasy simply for his title, not for his conversational skills. Here, though, Gere is required to be charming in actuality, not merely in name, as he wins over the townsfolk of Hale, Md. (one of many cutesy puns in the script). Roberts, meanwhile, is determined to hate him. No problem there: Gere's a jerk from start to finish. It's the falling-in-love part that defies belief.

Gere isn't a bad actor: When playing a mysterious, flawed man, as in Days of Heaven and American Gigolo, he can be very effective. But making with witty remarks isn't his forte. That's the only option the talky script, by Sara Parriott and Josann McGibbon, allows him or any other actor. No strong, silent types here--just quirky stereotypes right off the shelf, from the big-city newspaperman to the sex-crazed grandmother. All of them run off at the mouth and gesture wildly to convince you that they're funny.