My Best Friend's Wedding

Starring: Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, Philip Bosco, M. Emmet Walsh, Rachel Griffiths, Paul Giamatti, Harry Shearer
Directed by: P.J. Hogan
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
1997

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: A woman (Julia Roberts) is shocked to learn her best friend (Dermot Mulroney) is getting married. She realizes she's always been in love with him and travels to see him and break up the relationship.

Review:

Tim: Romantic movies (especially comedies/dramedies) often get a bad wrap for being formulaic. And, to be fair, a lot of these movies are designed to be lowest common denominator films. They appeal to a small demographic and don't tend to be overly concerned about the quality of the film. Fortunately, not all movies in the genre follow that path. I actually enjoy My Best Friend's Wedding. It's not a great film, but it's a perfectly enjoyable one. It felt different enough from the myriad of similar movies. I had fun watching this movie.

The premise is simple, but it subverts many of the tropes of the romantic comedy genre. A woman is determined to break up the upcoming wedding between her best friend (whom she realizes she's in love with) and a woman she's never met. The simple premise allows the film to be accessible to a wide audience- all we need to know is that our protagonist is trying to break up a relationship. There's interesting layers to this, however. First off, it paints our heroine in a pretty bad light. Sure, she might believe she's better for her best friend than his fiancee, but the protagonist in the film is actively trying to sabotage a looming wedding. We don't often see that depicted on the screen. I love that the movie didn't treat this as no big deal. The movie would have been a failure had the story always painted Julia Roberts' character in the best light. I loved the nuanced approach to this. There is a part of us that wants her to succeed- her character and the pending groom get along well together and have chemistry. However, it's a terrible thing to try and ruin someone's relationship and wreck their wedding. The movie spends quite a bit of time showing this side as well. Too often romantic movies fail because they're predictable and one-dimensional. That wasn't the case here. It felt like the story tried to tell a more complex, layered story about relationships and people. It doesn't quite take it far enough, but it was a marked improvement over the typical film.

The cast is definitely a big plus for the film. Julia Roberts is great in these kinds of movies. She's charismatic and energetic and it's fun to watch her here. The movie gave her a chance to flex her acting muscles a bit. It was a great role and she stepped up to the challenge. I liked how she gave the character some complexity- this is certainly not a caricature. She felt like a complex, authentic human being. Dermot Mulroney's performance was good, but his character was one of the most weakly written. He just acts in oblivious, idiotic ways throughout the film. He uses his smile to full effect and it's fun watching him opposite Roberts, but his character just wasn't great. Cameron Diaz is quite strong here as well. At first, her character feels like she might be obvious and over-the-top, but Diaz is able to show different sides of her throughout the performance. I thought Diaz made for a great foil to Roberts' character. I do want to spend time on the scene-stealing performance of Rupert Everett. He might have been my favorite part of the whole film. He's funny, charming, and draws the audience's attention. He gave a great supporting performance. These four make up a terrific main cast and the movie is helped by a smaller supporting role by M. Emmet Walsh and a very tiny appearance by Paul Giamatti. As a whole, this cast is much better than the average romantic dramedy.

I do acknowledge the film has its faults. It occasionally stays too surface level and it does stray into the more predictable, cliched territory now and again. However, many movies have issues like that. My Best Friend's Wedding is an entertaining film that feels like a unique twist on the road most often traveled. It was refreshing to see this story unfold and this is a movie that is certainly rewatchable. I have a fun time with this movie and consider it one of the stronger films in the genre from the late 1990s.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 7.5



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