He's just a gigolo, but romance blooms'The Wedding Date' an unromantic comedy

In 1990's Pretty Woman, the services of Hollywood hooker Julia Roberts cost $3,000 for a week, all inclusive. In Pretty Man - oops, I mean The Wedding Date - the services of Manhattan rent boy Dermot Mulroney cost $6,000 for a weekend, extra for sex.

Note that over 15 years, the price of a paid escort has escalated at a higher rate (more than 100 percent) than that of a movie ticket (50 percent). Cost of living adjustment, or are men always better paid? There are other ways of analyzing the numbers.

A vaguely creepy and mildly diverting rom-com (romantic comedy to you, Bub), The Wedding Date may be a milestone on the road to sexual equality. Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman is no longer alone in purveying the fantasy that money buys you sex and, incidentally, love. So, too, does Clare Kilner's film, starring Debra Messing as the woman doing the buying.

One could argue that it's a sign of gender parity that there are cynical female filmmakers as well as male. One could also argue that The Wedding Date calculates female need versus male want. There is a measure of humor, however balky, in the difference.

Messing plays Kat, an airline customer-service rep who can't face her sister's London wedding dateless. Her sib Amy (Amy Adams) is an attention hog and full-blown Bridezilla. Then there's the matter of Kat's ex - who jilted her at the altar - being the groom's best man. Two years later, Kat's still not over him.

So she zeroes out her 401(k) and hires Nick Mercer (Mulroney), socially buffed and polished to a tawny gleam. He is upbeat, outgoing, insightful, empathic and funny - qualities that many women seek in a best friend. It doesn't hurt the cause that Nick resembles Michelangelo's David with a scar on his kisser, a quality that some women seek in arm candy.

Kat has a lot of baggage, literal and metaphorical. Nick helps her unpack. Gently, he calls her on continuing to tote her anger at being the less-loved child and the less-loved romantic partner. Kat isn't accustomed to having a guy care about, let alone perceptively analyze, her feelings. She likes it, even though she worries about buying the attention she deserves. And to buy sex would be "morally repugnant."

In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere bought sexual companionship, which bloomed into an emotional bond; here Messing buys emotional companionship which buds into sexual attraction.

Who is this guy who dresses GQ, talks Oprah and looks divine? Mulroney, best known as the title character in Roberts' comedy My Best Friend's Wedding, is by far the best thing about this gaggingly unromantic comedy. His character's bio, divulged in a thumbnail, is the least convincing thing.

Like most female filmmakers (think Nancy Meyers' direction of Keanu Reeves in Something's Gotta Give or Kasi Lemmons with Samuel L. Jackson in Eve's Bayou), Kilner highlights her male star's interpersonal charms rather than his physical prowess.

Would that Messing had fared as well in this film. Alas, in the spirit of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the thinking is that there is a direct correlation between heroine humiliation and audience laughter. I'm sure I am not the first moviegoer who thinks there is an inverse proportion between the two.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

The Wedding Date

** (out of four stars)

Produced by Nathalie Marciano, Michelle Chydzik Sowa, Jessica Bendinger and Paul Brooks, directed by Clare Kilner, written by Dana Fox, based on Elizabeth Young's novel Asking for Trouble, photography by Oliver Curtis, music by Blake Neely, distributed by Universal Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins.

Kat Ellis. . . Debra Messing

Nick Mercer. . . Dermot Mulroney

Amy Ellis. . . Amy Adams

Bunny Ellis. . . Holland Taylor

Victor Ellis. . . Peter Egan

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual candor, posterior nudity, profanity)

Playing at: area theaters