Runaway Bride

Variety Todd McCarthy

The central idea is quite clever and appealing, and that the charm meter is turned up all the way.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

Wonderful characters keep the movie from gagging on sweetness.

USA Today Mike Clark

The movie-calendar equivalent of last July's "Six Days, Seven Nights," this star-powered romance overcomes a shaky start to outpace that passable confection by several runaway laps.

Slate David Edelstein

Once the premise had been established and the leads began to interact, I stopped totting up the inanities and had a good time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

But the movie's vital signs improve remarkably in the second half, and especially in the last act. The proceedings suddenly pick up some screwball charm, the writing improves (with several truly inspired one-liners tossed in here and there) and the secondary characters begin to click.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

A movie drunk on its very existence, one that misses more frequently than it hits and couldn't care less.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's no Runaway success, but Gere and Roberts still glow.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

More often, the film is like a ride through a car wash: forward motion, familiar phases in the same old order and a sense of being carried along steadily on a well-used track. It works without exactly showing signs of life.

The New Yorker David Denby

Poky but often charming.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The difference between "Pretty Woman" and Runaway Bride is that we can no longer buy Roberts in her tearful romantic-melancholy mode. It seems vaguely patronizing now.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The screenplay provides enough cute one-liners and love-struck speeches to give the comedy intermittent charm.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Lack of chemistry between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts sinks this souffle.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A shiny bauble full of dead weight, gloppy good feeling and airless cliches. And every time you try to grab onto "Bride's" characters, they run away. [30 July 1999]

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Fans of Gere and Roberts may not care about the movie's many implausibilities and other shortcomings because the stars do indeed sparkle like the bubbles in wedding champagne. But the rest of us will find the vintage too sweet.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

After seeing Gere and Roberts play much smarter people (even in romantic comedies), it is painful to see them dumbed down here. The screenplay is so sluggish, they're like Derby winners made to carry extra weight.

Film.com Robert Horton

It's all safe and sane and bland.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A clumsy motion picture that strives so hard for the perfect romantic ending that it triggers a gag reflex along the way.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Runaway Bride's Josann McGibbon & Sara Parriott script is so muddled and contrived, raising issues only to ignore them or throw them away, you wonder why so many people embraced it.

Film.com John Hartl

It doesn't generate enough laughs to make up for the fact that you never figure out what he (a misogynistic USA Today columnist played by Richard Gere) sees in her (a dizzy small-town hairdresser played by Roberts). Or, for that matter, what she could ever see in him.

Austin Chronicle Sarah Hepola

Too bad their characters are comprised of nothing but the most hackneyed clichés and that it apparently never occurred to anyone to add even sketches of believable character development.

Newsweek David Ansen

It's not just that the movie is formulaic; it's disingenuous. It relies on Roberts's smile to erase all misgivings. But all the stardust in the world can't disguise the fact that this is more package than picture.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

Runaway Bride isn't as offensive as most studio romantic comedies—just pointless and dull.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Other than a few gratuitous montage sequences, plus a patently clumsy echo of the shopping scene in "Pretty Woman," Marshall refuses to pull his share of the load, forcing his beleaguered cast to fend for themselves.

New Times (L.A.) Hal Hinson

Marshall is the very definition of a hack; his one and only desire is to play to the lowest common denominator. This is the secret of his success: He aspires to mediocrity. With Runaway Bride, he has scored another bull's-eye.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

In "Pretty Woman" Roberts played a tough whore with a soft heart. Here, she's a business owner whose sense of self is so tenuous she doesn't even know how she likes her eggs done.

Film.com Moira Macdonald

Comes off as nothing more than a PG-rated excuse to showcase Roberts in a variety of wedding gowns (five, by my count) and an exhausting number of comedy cliches.

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

You would never have predicted it from the breakout success of "Pretty Woman" nearly a decade ago, but it turns out that the pairing of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts has ripened over the years into something resembling month-old brie.

Film Threat Ron Wells

I completely dreaded sitting through this movie...Two-hour purgatory.

New York Post Rob Dreher

A runaway bore.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Maybe writers Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott were thinking of Tracy and Hepburn--assuming they were thinking of anything--but not even Roberts's smile can put this one over.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Another contrived, unconvincing romantic comedy that once again mixes stale sitcom humor with laughable attempts at pathos and emotional depth.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

[Gere] seemed to be improvising his way from beginning to end, like he was disgusted with the actual script.

Film.com Ernest Hardy

Atrocious bit of by-the-numbers screen filler. And anyone who easily lapses into sugar comas is advised to stay far, far away.