If When Harry Met Sally questioned whether men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way, My Best Friend’s Wedding is unequivocal. If your fiance has a female BFF – especially if she has the megawatt smile and mile-long legs of Julia Roberts at her ravishing best – prepare for drama. Even if you’re Cameron Diaz. Which is the precise scenario we’re confronted with at the start of my favourite chaotic caper, which made just under $300m at the global box office when it debuted in 1997, and also stole my heart as a melodramatic 11-year-old.
We were truly spoiled for romcoms in the 90s – believe me, I watched them all – but My Best Friend’s Wedding is something special. To watch this PJ Hogan classic (he also directed Muriel’s Wedding) is to sink into a warm bath of nostalgia, complete with brick-sized mobile phones, indoor smoking and croony Burt Bacharach classics. It has everything: a car chase, an all-cast singalong lunch complete with dancing lobster claws and even an intimate mishap with an ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David. But it also has the chutzpah to turn the romcom formula on its head, and give us an ending we don’t necessarily expect.
Roberts plays Julianne, a no-nonsense New York food critic who has a pact with her college best friend Michael (a Disney-handsome, if dull, Dermot Mulroney) that if they reach the ripe old age of 28 unmarried, they’ll marry each other. Except now Michael is marrying peppy 20-year-old Kimmy (Diaz), which prompts Julianne to realise she’s actually desperately in love with him herself. “It’s amazing, the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy,” Julianne’s editor George (Rupert Everett) drily remarks. Cue increasingly manic ploys to sabotage the wedding.
Roberts is a bride-to-be’s worst nightmare. As a preteen in rural Surrey, I didn’t know anyone like these characters, but now I recognise Julianne instantly as one of those women who has no female friends, and for good reason. Impeccable in peak 90s tailoring and Pretty Woman-era auburn curls, she arrives in Chicago for the wedding and, within minutes, is making references to the “one hot month” she and Michael spent together at college. The impenetrable in-jokes are constant – poor Kimmy – and Julianne is such a knockout in her lavender satin bridesmaid gown (Kimmy’s former maid of honour “shattered her pelvis line-dancing over spring break”) that you’d be tempted to call off the entire thing there and then.
But what I love, and have always loved about this film, is that it refuses to turn Kimmy into the villain in order to justify Julianne’s actions. Sure, she’s shrieky and drives like a psychopath, but she’s also sweet. In fact, none of the characters are entirely good or bad, they’re just nuanced – like real people (just very good-looking real people). It’s impossible not to root for Julianne, who’s the perfect, chaotic anti-hero. OK, so she’s chaotic in a sort of screwbally, Julia Roberts way that feels almost aspirational, but still, her inability to deal with things in a rational way feels very human. She’s too frightened and broken and proud to tell Michael how she feels, so there’s nothing for her to do but make bad decisions and chain-smoke through it, like a normal person. It’s refreshing!
If I learned any lesson from the romcoms of my youth, it was that if you love somebody, you pursue them at all costs. But My Best Friend’s Wedding points out that, actually, that’s not always a great idea. And ultimately, Julianne puts herself out there, and gets shunned. It’s a big departure from romcom code, and while the film feels conventional in a lot of ways, I’ve always appreciated the honesty of its message that, actually, love isn’t always enough.
It’s not all drama, though. In fact, while this film has a lot of heart, it’s also frequently absurd, and that’s what stops it being saccharine and makes it so rewatchable. A favourite moment of mine is when a serious conversation between Julianne and Michael is soundtracked by some wedding guests singing a three-part harmony of Annie’s Song in helium-induced chipmunk voices behind them. Meanwhile, Everett is exceptional as the charming and highly camp George, and the kitschy lip synch to Wishin’ and Hopin’ at the start of the film is utter perfection – I watch it on YouTube sometimes when I need cheering up.
My Best Friend’s Wedding originally had a different ending, in which Julianne meets a new love interest at the wedding reception, rather than dancing her cares away with George, but apparently it had to be scrapped as test audiences reacted so negatively. And thank goodness: the film’s ultimate feelgood factor surely comes from its flawless ending, and the message that friendship is the most important relationship of all. I was single for much of my 20s, and watching the film then, it felt so satisfying to see Julianne having the time of her life just hours after having been rejected by a guy, rather than moping around. Now that’s a happy ending.
