Release Date:  February 4, 2005
Rating:  PG-13 (for sexual content including language)
Genre:   Comedy/Romance
Run Time: 90 min.
Director:   Clare Kilner
Actors:   Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Adams, Jack Davenport, Sarah Parish, Jeremy Sheffield, Peter Egan, Holland Taylor

Oh, how romantic! Hooking up with a hooker!  And just in time for Valentine's Day, too.

An insecure airline executive who lives in New York City, Kat Ellis (Debra Messing) is frazzled to learn that the best man at her sister's upcoming wedding (Jeremy Sheffield), is her ex-boyfriend, who dumped her two years ago, without explanation.  So Kat withdraws $6,000 from her 401K and hires Nick (Dermot Mulroney), a "male escort," as her "date."

Apparently on the high-end of prostitution, Nick warns Kat that "intimacy will be more."  Wow.  A prostitute who's afraid to say the word "sex."  Now there's a first.  No wait, Nick is also drop-dead gorgeous, doesn't appear to have ever used drugs and gives not one hint that he's ever had a homosexual experience.  And, even though Nick does sleep with his clients, he insists that prostitution isn't about sex.  But he's a prostitute! Right.  And I'm the Queen of England.

Kat and Nick fly First Class (I guess she got an upgrade?) to London - in the strangest seats I've ever seen. There, Kat's mother (Holland Taylor), who is married to a Brit (Peter Egan), assigns the pair to Kat's bedroom - another first. And surprisingly, even though Kat coolly hired a gigolo, she becomes giggly and shy, piling pillows between them on the bed.  Not Nick, though.  He enjoys flaunting things, and even stands just inches in front of Kat, fully nude, to dry off, while she's sitting on the toilet chatting with him.  (I think that's called "upselling.")

Kat and Nick enjoy all sorts of typically British things during the next few days, such as pub crawling and a game of Rounders, the British ancestor to baseball, while Kat deals with her supremely dysfunctional family. In an astoundingly new plot device, Kat also flirts, has sex with, argues with, falls in love with, breaks up with, and, of course, (spoiler here!) gets back together with Nick, who loves her too. But wait!  That makes Nick an unemployed prostitute who's used to living the big life.  What will they do for money? Why, live happily ever after, of course.  Because, guess what?  Nick went to Brown University and majored in literature.  Just like all the other hookers in New York.

If you enjoy Cosmopolitan magazine ("I Was in a Harem;" "I Was a Millionaire's Mistress"), you'll adore this movie, which is a poor re-do of the 1990 "Pretty Woman." Not that that film was any great work of art. And I realize I'm going to upset all those ex-12-year-old girls who comprised that movie's core audience, but it, too, had a terrible message. "Pretty Woman's" lie was that, in order to marry a gorgeous, suave billionaire, all you had to do was hang out on Hollywood Boulevard and solicit customers for sex.  This film's premise is just as stupid - and just as sordid. In fact, try as I might to buy into Nick and Kat's romance, I just felt slimed. And it didn't help that Mulroney never cracked a smile. That, however, was probably the most realistic part of the film.