My Best Friend's Wedding

10 out of 10

My Best Friend’s Wedding is the second romantic comedy that I’ve seen this summer. The other was Jennifer Aniston’s Picture Perfect. The difference between these two summer of 1997 romantic comedies? My Best Friend’s Wedding is a funny, witty, and touching film. Julia Roberts, who also stars in this summer’s Conspiracy Theory, is Julianne Potter. Julianne Potter is a food critic. She is three weeks away from her 28th birthday, and she remembers a crazy promise that she made with her best friend (who was her previous boyfriend nine years ago). If either of them did not get married by the time that they turned 28, they would marry each other. And that day Julianne gets a call from, whom else but, her best friend, Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney). The call is not a proposal, as she was expecting, but an invitation to his wedding. It turns out that Michael, the only love of her life for the last nine years, is getting married to a 20 year old junior in college, Kimmy Wallace (the stunning Cameron Diaz). Kimmy is the daughter of the owner of the White Sox and a cable network. Now, Julianne has four days to sabotage the wedding and win Michael back.

It’s not too easy to guess how the movie is going to end, and this is because of the well-written script by Ronald Bass (Dangerous Minds, Joy Luck Club). And although, it is sometimes hard to agree with what Julianne is doing, we are always with her. Director P.J. Hogan took every effort to put Julia Roberts in every scene, and this is a really good thing because Roberts is just luminous.

Julia Roberts gives a great performance as the crazed and desperate Julianne. She has great comic timing, and like always, lights up a scene with her smile and her big eyes. Cameron Diaz also gives a great performance as Kimmy, the wonderfully perfect wife-to-be for Michael. Her look is different from The Mask or Feeling Minnesota, this time around it is soft and innocent. Dermot Mulroney, who was in CopyCat and The Trigger Effect, gives a bland but good performance as the love interest of Julianne and Kimmy. But the show stealer, next to Roberts, would be Rupert Everett as George, Julianne’s gay editor. Everett, who could have been a great cast as Michael, gives a grand performance. And it is his character that seems to be the only sane character in the whole movie.

The opening credits were strange, to say the least, but they give a hint as to some of the silliness that comes during the movie, and they work well in that respect. The movie score (James Newton Howard) is good, but somewhat forgettable. But, the music that is used during the film fits in very well, and works to make the mood.

My Best Friend’s Wedding is well deserved as this summer’s sleeper hit. It is a funny, witty, and touching film that entertains throughout its two hours. Julia Roberts is wonderful as the crazed woman, and gives a much better performance here than she did in Conspiracy Theory. My Best Friend’s Wedding is definitely the date-movie of this summer. Don’t miss this one in the theatres.