THE NEAR-GREAT MOVIES: Part two of a continuing series. Today: My Best Friend's Wedding.
Starring Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett and Dermot Mulroney, MBFW is a fundamentally flawed movie. It just doesn't work. But the ways in which it doesn't work tell you everything you'll ever need to know about what makes romantic comedies work when they do work, and for that reason, it's one of my favorite movies to talk about and revisit.
This is a triangle movie that skips the Boy Meets Girl part and jumps right into Girl Loses Boy And Needs To Get Her Back. Nothing wrong there. Many of the elements of great romantic comedy are in place: the Trusted, Witty Friend; the haughty parents; the miscommunications and the madcap chases.
The cast is solid. In particular, Everett is just plain fabulous as George Downes, the wise, gay editor who comes in to save the day for Our Heroine Julia.
And the premise is sound: two long-time friends (Roberts, Mulroney) had promised that if neither married by the age of 28, they'd marry. Only Mulroney just found love on his own, in the form of Kimmy Wallace (Diaz), a nineteen year-old University of Chicago architecture major (and yes, there are at least three things wrong with that clause). So now Roberts realizes she wants him back, wants to break up the wedding and uses her friend (Everett) to pose as her fiancee as a distraction from her machinations. Will she succeed in breaking them up? Will anyone find true love? It's a great setup for a movie . . .
. . . and yet, it just doesn't work. Why? Because in a Julia Roberts Movie, Julia Roberts is supposed to end up with the man. I don't care if it's Pretty Woman or Mystic Pizza or Notting Hill or Runaway Bride or even Erin Brockovich -- if Julia is the star, Julia's gets a happy ending, including The Guy. And, [spoiler], this time, she doesn't.
But that's not all: not only does she not win The Guy, we don't really want her to. Instead of being Our Hero Julia, the Julia of MBFW becomes increasingly unsympathetic as she tries to break up the wedding of Mulroney and Diaz. She plays dirty, and not in a cute way. (Also, she smokes, and Good Girls Don't Smoke In Movies.) This movie absolutely frustrates your expectations for romantic comedy by not wanting you to root for The Name Above The Title, and it's a striking choice.
Not only do we not want her to succeed in breaking them up, the movie doesn't convince us to root for Diaz and Mulroney either. Diaz is a likeable enough ditz, but Mulroney's character is just a blank slate --an "underwritten, blankly rendered pretty-boy", as one review put it, and so we don't really want anyone to end up with him. We just don't care.
The only character we do care about? The gay guy. Does he end up with anyone? Of course not.
So why watch this movie? First off, as I said, it's so obvious what's missing that you will keep rescripting it in your head until it works -- that either Julia and Dermot are supposed to be together, and it works, because there will be some Big Flaw they'll discover with Kimmy; or Julia realizes she's not meant to be with him (which she does in the movie), but she still finds someone else, because movies require happy endings, not wistful ones. Under the Law of Economy of Character Development, however, that should be The Friend, but in that case, he can't be gay, which would strip this movie of its best character. Choices have to be made.
[See? But once you figure out what this movie needed, you can plot 90% of Hollywood's romantic comedies just by hearing the premise.]
Secondly, and just as important, this movie gets all the little things right. Every supporting role is well-thought, well-cast and memorable. I haven't watched the movie in years but I can still remember the details -- the Burt Bacharach songs, Diaz's older sisters, the kids with the helium, the guy with the giant lobster-claw mittens -- really cute, amusing throwaway stuff that works. While the core of this cake was poorly-baked, the icing makes you smile.
I really despised this movie when I first saw it. I was just so frustrated with all the ways it messed with my expectations that I couldn't appreciate the movie which was made. My Best Friend's Wedding is not a great movie by any stretch, but its flaws make it one of the most interesting movies out there. Rent it.
Next week: Point Break? Top Secret? To be determined.
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