Ike Graham is a New York newspaper columnist with a problem - his deadline is an hour away, his ex-wife is his boss and his writer's block is working overtime. Retreating to his favorite watering hole to "brainstorm," Ike hears about a young woman in rural Maryland named Maggie who, apparently, loves being engaged, but who has very cold feet about getting married. Intrigued, Ike composes a column about Maggie, beginning a chain of events which leads him to Hale, Maryland, her hometown. Maggie Carpenter also has a problem - Ike Graham. Furious with the column and its author, she plans to even the score with him. Ike eventually discovers there is much more to Maggie than just a problem with commitment; and he ends up with the story of a lifetime.
The scariest film to take place in Maryland this year isn't The Blair Witch Project – it's the paint-by-numbers re-teaming of Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall and stars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Here, in Marshall's second directorial dud of the year (The Other Sister was equally unimaginative), Gere's triumphant acting style that made Red Corner a box office smash remains unchanged, while Roberts conjures up memories of debacles past, just about erasing any memory of her fine performance in Notting Hill.
