一个优点牧师isiting “Pretty Woman”: You can’t deny that society has made some real progress since 1990.

No one could argue seriously any more for the narrative of the Julia Roberts-Richard Gere rom-com, where a rich guy pays for a prostitute to be his hassle-free arm candy and sex handmaid for a week — so different from the rich women he knows, with all their human needs — then gives her a fairy-tale ending.

The film’s problems are too legion. AsChronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle recently wrote,rom-coms in general don’t age well. So why musicalize this one now? “Pretty Woman: The Musical,” which opened Wednesday, April 26, at BroadwaySF’s Orpheum Theatre, provides scant answer.

Both the film and musical erase the actual life conditions of sex workers but capitalize on their supposed gritty cool, especially in the Garry Marshall movie, with the thrill of seeing Roberts slumming it as Vivian, Hollywood Boulevard streetwalker. Both show her john, Edward, as befuddled; if anything, she’s the one who preys on him at first. Her “My Fair Lady” transformation and budding infatuation are about learning how to spend money like a rich girl. She, with her feminine spunk, thaws his masculine iciness — a down-class precursor to the mid-2000s manic pixie dream girl.

当这对夫妇最终之外的聚在一起business transaction, our American-class anxieties are supposed to be assuaged: Don’t worry, it says, we really do still live in an egalitarian society if these two can make a match. And while she’s at it, Vivian can teach Edward to be less of a vulturelike financier and get back into the true-blue American model of making and selling more things.

In the musical, Vivian (Jessie Davidson) is still the toy of Edward (Jonathan Young on opening night, subbing for Adam Pascal), though both strenuously deny that fact. Now she’s a little bit dorkier in her love of fancy cars, and in Young’s performance Edward is stonier of expression, but otherwise the 1990 dynamic persists.

Book writers J.F. Lawton and Marshall (who also collaborated on the film) make some small updates — now Vivian’s friend Kit (Jessica Crouch) is allowed to have a dream too: becoming a cop — but they can’t paper over the story’s core ickiness. Each time you catch yourself feeling invested in the leads, their quips, the sexual tension, a cringe undercuts the charm.

The best screen-to-stage adaptations involve the narrator (Travis Ward-Osborne), who after a painful opening number of throat clearing becomes the maitre d’ at the Beverly Wilshire. He has a bevy of bellhops and footmen who are always ready to burst into ballroom dance, creating a hotel populated by fairy godfathers and fairy minions who maybe really could make dreams come true. Wishy-washy music, though, by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, suffers from that ’90s slow-rock phenomenon where the space between each drumbeat stretches outward into infinity.

Four years ago in the New York Times, Wesley Morrislamented the death of the rom-com,which might supply one guess as to why musical theater turned to “Pretty Woman” — a dearth of fresh source material.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com