My Best Friend's Wedding

Introduction

As sophomores at Brown, Julianne and Michael (Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney) agreed that, if they were both single when they reached 28, they'd marry each other. A few weeks short of her 28th birthday, food critic Julianne suddenly remembers the pact when she has a message on her answering machine from Michael asking to speak to her urgently. Almost coming round to the idea of marrying her best friend, she calls him and is stunned when he tells her he's getting married in four days, not to her, but to 20 year old Kimmy (Cameron Diaz).

This revelation causes Julianne to realise that she has been in love with Michael all these years and sets about trying to sabotage the relationship so that she can marry Michael. In this task she enlists the help of her gay editor, George (Rupert Everett) who, aside from offering words of advice, proves to be a bit of a loose cannon.

This is P.J. Hogan sticking to a wedding theme, after the brilliant Muriel's Wedding, with Australian actress Rachel Griffiths continuing her collaboration with Hogan, playing one of Kimmy's bitchy sisters.

Video

When the film begins, with four women singing a song over the opening credits, I noticed some noise in the purple backdrop and thought it was a sign of things to come but I needn't have worried as this is a stunning picture, with terrific flesh tones and colour.

*The pictures contained in this review are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the image quality of the disc.*

Audio

The soundtrack is clear and sharp, with the surrounds used well when the occasion calls. It's unusual for a non-musical to have this much singing but it works well and is very well presented.

As usual for a Sony BD there are myriad subtitle options.

Extra Features

There are several featurettes, covering the 'making of' and 'behind the scenes' bases very well, providing information about shooting locations and actors. The Wedding Do's and Don'ts is a 'guide' to putting on a perfect wedding using clips from silent movies - it's not particularly amusing.

The Say a Little Prayer Sing-a-Long plays the clip from the film in a karaoke style and there are also trailers for Surf's Up and Men in Black plus the Blu-ray Disc™ Is High Definition showreel.

It's a shame there is not a commentary but I don't know what P. J. Hogan would have to say that the featurettes don't.

Conclusion

The phrase 'guilty pleasure' is usually used to describe a film that's really bad but that you like - in this case My Best Friend's Wedding is a guilty pleasure of mine but only because it's so far removed from my normal taste in films that it's almost embarrassing to admit to liking.

Whilst not as clever or witty, My Best Friend's Wedding reminds me a little of such films as His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story, with a love triangle driving the narrative in such a way that it could have been made in the 1940s with Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn.

This kind of movie is the sort of thing that Julia Roberts could do in her sleep but she's wide awake and on top form, coming across as adorable, ruthless and vulnerable. Her relationship with Rupert Everett is fantastic and he is great, the studio didn't know that he could 'do' comedy but he is a fine comedic actor. Having proved she could sing when she made a massive impression in her debut The Mask, Cameron Diaz is equally adept at appearing completely tone deaf whilst singing at a karaoke bar but my favourite scene has to be Rupert Everett spontaneously bursting into 'Say a Little Prayer' whilst the whole wedding party is eating at a seafood restaurant - I had the song in my head for hours afterwards!

This is a decent package of a very well written, directed and acted romantic comedy that certainly has longevity and has a wider audience base than most rom-coms. Recommended.