REVIEW: My Best Friends Wedding By Luke Buckmaster (bucky@alphalink.com.au)
Cast: Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, Philip Bosco, M. Emmet Walsh, Carrie Preston, Rachel Griffiths Director: P.J. Hogan Producers: Ronald Bass and Jerry Zucker Screenplay: Ronald Bass Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs Music: James Newton Howard
On the Buckmaster scale of 0 stars (bomb), to 5 stars (a masterpiece): 4 stars
Weddings, one of the most treasured events in human life, have proven to be immensely popular on the silver screen. Just look at the record of unbridled (get it, un-bridled) successes throughout the last decade - Father of the Bride I and II, Muriels Wedding, Four Weddings and a Funeral, the list goes on…
However, My Best Friends Wedding skillfully departs the tedious track record of two people falling in love and getting married in love-a-dove feel good films. Instead the movie takes an entirely different angle of holy matrimony, show casing not only two peoples love for each other but also for another who regrets having lost her one true love.
It's a story of jealousy. The charming and charismatic Julianne (Julia Roberts) is a restaurant critic with a short attention span for most things in life - whether that is lovers, food or friendship. Determined, wearisome and courageous, she is the modern working class woman with an attitude.
Not long into the film we are exposed to Julianne's almost selfish but adorable character, and in no time she finds herself caught in an intriguing situation of mixed emotions and life long secrets. It seems that Michael, her best friend since early high school years, has just decided to get married. Julianne is not in any way pleased for him, as she suddenly realizes that she has loved the man for 20 years - and has "four days to break up a wedding and win her man.". But the cocky Julianne has some lessons to learn….
Michael's fiancé Kimmy Wallace (Cameron Diaz) is quickly realized by Julianne as being "irritatingly perfect", and with good cause - she's beautiful, polite, understanding and entirely lovable. And to further Julianne's problems, Kimmy asks her to be the bride's maid minutes after meeting her. Whilst this may be nice and rosy, Julianne still has a mission to achieve - and she's not about to give up.
Until this point (as you may have noticed), the film doesn't take itself too seriously, but the best jokes are still to be seen as the plot takes its most interesting turn upon the arrival of Julianne's gay friend George (played by the appealing Rupert Everett). Advising her in moments of need, George confronts Julianne with the most important question yet: "Do you really love him, or is this just about winning?"
The scenes to follow are lovely, clever slabs of comedy and romance including a sing-a-long restaurant scene bound to put anyone in stitches.
When watching this film, I couldn't help but keep my eyes glued to the screen in the hope for more quality gags; something that it does with class and poignancy. But before too long, a familiar critical factor put my mind into fearful overdrive. This was, of course, the all-important ending. After all, the entire movie was of such a high standard that a disappointing ending would have been disastrous to the film; and Australian director P.J Hogan (Muriels Wedding) was faced with a do or die situation. Fortunately, he was able to conquer up a skillful and very beneficial (and very unexpected) ending, without a bias towards the film's protagonist.
If most Hollywood pictures turned out as rock solid and well rounded off as this one, us critics wouldn't have nearly as much to say, and if we would the chances are it would be something pleasing. For Jerry Maguire fans, you'll love this film, and for those put off by the feminine sounding title rest assured - there's definitely something special in the air.
Witty, charming and funny, My Best Friends Wedding is a definite winner. However, one over riding question still remains: do I have the confidence to recommend this film to my friends and family through sickness and health, till death do us part? I do.
Email bucky@alphalink.com.au to subscribe to my newsletter (unless, of course, you already have) or lukebuckmaster@hotmail.com for any inquiries or feedback
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews