My Best Friend's Wedding
Director: P.J. Hogan. Cast: Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, Philip Bosco.
Screenplay: Ronald Bass.
For all of the couples that populate My Best Friend's Wedding, the most welcome union of all is the
collection in one movie of Julia Roberts, one of our most game comic actresses, with younger talents like
Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett who turn this thinnish project into a truly winning confection. The
recipe, as with Meg Ryan's Addicted to Love, released the previous month,
makes the surprising move of casting its perky, well-liked heroine as the villain of the piece, or at
least the closest thing to a villain this particular story has. Jules, the restaurant critic (read:
snippy, critical-minded control freak) played by Roberts, speaks for the first time in a long while with
Michael (Dermot Mulroney), her best friend and ex-flame of a few years. Jules and Michael had always
agreed that they would marry each other if they still had no spouse by a certain age—my memory of the
movie's charm obscures more specific details like the terms of their agreement—then they would marry each
other.
Of course, much of the events that put the plot in motion do not require a genius to predict. Jules grows
increasingly smitten with the idea of marrying Michael, but when he actually calls, it is to announce his
engagement to Kimberly (Diaz), an upper-crust though spirited and welcoming young lady who has sidetracked
any career ambitions or outside life to make a home with Michael. It is never clear what it is about
Kimberly that so rankles Jules, especially since Roberts' own effusive beauty—the long copper curls are
back!—doesn't make Diaz's blonde perfection as threatening as it might otherwise be. Does Roberts the
career woman resent the affluent Kimberly's ability to do away with the need to work? Is Jules actually
in love with Michael herself, or does she just find herself feeling that way out of rivalry and
spoiledness on the eve of Michael's marriage to Kim?
That the film never resolves this mystery deserves praise; Roberts' feelings are not reduced to any
particular point of jealousy, but are allowed to be as rootless in their unfriendliness, as arbitrarily
cruel to Kim, as such feelings are in real life. It seems true enough that we do not always have real or
valid reasons for disliking some people except that they are doing what we wish we could do but
know we cannot. Roberts does not forget, however, even in tackling a character who perpetrates some real
doozies of low-blows, that this picture is a comedy and demands a certain lightness of touch. She plays
the bad girl I have always wanted Roberts to attempt and the spritely "Julia Roberts" persona that
allows us to observe such shenanigans and not get totally fed up with Jules and her ruthlessness. It's
a nimble piece of work, and together with the intriguing Conspiracy
Theory, shows Roberts to great advantage as a major talent who keeps picking shrewd and
deserving projects.
Part of what keeps the balance of the film so impressively balanced between supporting Jules' forwardness
and condemning her duplicity is that Diaz makes Kimberly an actually likable person; we love to root for
Roberts, but we hate to root against the woman whose happiness she assaults. Unlike the vixens
Diaz got stuck playing in vehicles like She's the One, Kimberly is humane and warm, and even when
Roberts tries to trap the notoriously tin-eared Kimberly into busting out a routine in a karaoke bar,
Kim pulls through. Diaz, like her distaff co-star, trickily plays two emotions in this scene: the
affection for Michael that gets her through the ordeal, right on top of the embarrassment she
feels at receiving such wide attention for what she knows to be a meager performance. The whole scene is
zany, funny, and surprisingly moving, and even if Dermot Mulroney never seems to deserve the great fuss
that's made about him, Roberts and Diaz play their different versions of dreamy rapture so convincingly
and smartly that we barely stop to notice.
I have not yet mentioned one of My Best Friend's Wedding's capital delights, which is the
performance of Rupert Everett as Jules' best friend, a gay male confidant and colleague named George who
out-suaves everyone around without smothering us in charm. It's an infectious performance, particularly
after George decides that the best way to survive his growing involvement in Jules' schemes is to indulge
his own most flamboyant tendencies toward white-lie deception. He even injects so much energy and flair
into his public-restaurant rendition of Dionne Warwick's "I Say a Little Prayer" that we don't mind seeing
this same damn scene for the 1000th time in a movie. In the tradition of Hollywood's
gay-male best friends, George is a dapper and swoony presence who nonetheless remains without a partner
himself as the picture ends. Still, like the movie itself, Everett is so breezy and pleasurable while we
are watching him that we can hardly think about how little we actually know of him and how little
structure his character actually has.
If there's a pattern to this review, it's the emphasis on those virtues of My Best Friend's Wedding
that make such a vivid and appealing impression that we forget, ignore, or fail even to notice those
elements that are less successful. Yes, it would be nice to have a romantic comedy that didn't require
displacing our attention away from a doltish lead actor, a few unsatisfying plot intrigues (like one in
which Kim appears to trivialize Michael's sportswriting job), or the heavily dog-eared institutions of the
spontaneous song, the effete asexual companion, the woman vs. woman antagonism. Those are all problems
(or at least uninspiring neutral elements) in Ronald Bass' script, but the talent brought on board My
Best Friend's Wedding aces the task of throwing their strengths where we'll most appreciate them,
tiding over the rough spots in the material with a healthy dose of star-power, candy-colored designs, and
even a refreshingly uncertain ending. In a movie era where stars are so often plugged into material that
does not take full advantage of their gifts, I'll say a little prayer to the rare movie that shows its
cast—and its audience—a jolly good time. Grade: B
- Academy Award Nominations:
- Best Original Score (Musical/Comedy): James Newton Howard
- Golden Globe Nominations:
- Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)
- Best Actress (Musical/Comedy): Julia Roberts
- Best Supporting Actor: Rupert Everett