It Ain't `Pretty' -- `Runaway Bride' Is No Match Made In Heaven For Roberts, Gere

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XX 1/2 "Runaway Bride," with Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, Rita Wilson, Paul Dooley. Directed by Garry Marshall, from a script by Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott. 110 minutes. Several theaters. "PG" - Parental guidance advised because of language and some suggestive dialogue.

Julia Roberts' last romantic comedy, "Notting Hill," was just witty enough to overcome its contrived happy ending and the inevitable question it raised: What did she ever see in him?

No, not the ever-resourceful Hugh Grant, but that silly bookseller he played. By film's end, especially after those glimpses of his character's clearly uncomfortable new life in the spotlight, their pairing seemed questionable at best.

Roberts' latest, "Runaway Bride," is even more troubled by this problem, partly because it's not as funny. 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.

Both movies seem determined to link their marquee names romantically, even if their personalities, as the script sets them up, really don't mesh. Indeed, "Runaway Bride" goes out of its way to create antagonisms between its leading characters before they ever set eyes on each other.

Talk about meeting cute. Roberts' character, Maggie Carpenter, gets Ike Graham (Gere) fired from his newspaper job in the opening reel. Determined to prove that the column in which he insulted her wasn't slander, he shows up in Maggie's salon, where she exacts even more revenge, giving him a Day-Glo dye job instead of a haircut.

Maggie, who has left three men standing at the altar as she literally fled from her wedding ceremonies, really is a runaway bride, even if she's not quite as irresponsible as Ike claims in his column. The movie mostly deals with his attempts to prove he's right, and her attempts to clear herself.

Try as they may, the writing team, Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott (whose depressing list of credits includes "Three Men and a Little Lady" and "Worth Winning"), can't turn this into a winning romantic situation.

However mean-spirited and questionable his columns may be, Ike does have a point, which is underlined quite broadly later in the film. Maggie has a habit of linking up with unlikely suitors, then dumping them in the most public and embarrassing of circumstances.

Ike is hardly alone in his estimation of Maggie's failings. Her father (Paul Dooley), her best friend (Joan Cusack) and most of the community "roast" her with insults at a party, and Ike ends up insisting that they stop using shock humor to lower her self-esteem. This is the closest the movie comes to suggesting a common ground for Ike and Maggie, but it's not much of a reason. They can agree only on what they don't like.

The director, Garry Marshall, who previously worked with Gere and Roberts on the immensely popular "Pretty Woman" (1990), isn't as lucky with the chemistry this time. At his most desperate, he throws in a tired music video sequence of Maggie playing with a swing.

Gere and Roberts do their best with the material they've got, and a few members of the supporting cast sparkle, especially Christopher Meloni as Maggie's hapless latest fiance and Rita Wilson as Ike's charming ex-wife. But the dialogue often seems to be echoing the song that plays under the opening credits: "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."