Film review: My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), directed by PJ Hogan
Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) and Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) have been best friends for about as long as they can remember. In fact, they’re such good friends they make a pact: if neither of them have gotten married by the time they both hit 28 they’ll marry each other.
Just a few weeks before her 28th birthday Michael phones Julianne with big news. He’s getting married! In four days! To 20-year-old Kimberly Wallace (Cameron Diaz)!
Hell-bent on hating Kimberly – having suddenly realised that Michael is the love of her life – Julianne goes to Chicago to sabotage the wedding. Problem is Kimberly is such a nice girl, and she even asks Julianne to be her Maid of Honour.
Also starring Rupert Everett as George Downes, with Rachel Griffiths as Samantha Newhouse and Christopher Masterson Scotty O’Neal.
This is another one of those films where the woman goes completely off the rails because a man doesn’t want to marry her. Because having THAT PARTICULAR MAN is the be-all end-all of all relationships, or indeed her entire life, obviously. Puh-lease. Suck it up and move the fuck on, why don’t you?
“But then there wouldn’t be a story to tell! Duuh!”
Could we not have a different story, then? Instead of rabid females losing their sanity because their boyfriend finds someone else, why can’t she ever go “well, screw him, I can do better” and then go and find someone better? Without taking to stalking him and his new girlfriend with the help of his new girlfriend’s ex or jumping on a plane and go halfway around the world only to fall in love with the bloke next to her. I’m just saying …
Anyway. My Best Friend’s Wedding is cute, Rupert Everett as the gay best friend trying to pose as a straight boyfriend is amusing (and the character thinks it’s just as silly as we viewers do), Cameron Diaz is chirpy and adorable and Julia Roberts is an obsessed idiot. But at least it ends well, so that’s something.
3 out of 5 phone calls.
