My Best Friend's Wedding (Special Edition)
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Actor: Cameron Diaz, Dermot Mulroney, Julia Roberts, Philip Bosco, Rupert EverettBrand: SONY PICTURES HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Georgian (Subtitled); Chinese (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Portuguese (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-08-28
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of My Best Friend's Wedding (Special Edition)
DVD Review: Like music? Look here...
Summary: 5 Stars
In 2001 Moulin Rouge brought back the musical, and in 2002 Chicago capped that comeback by taking six Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. A musical? Best picture?
Before either of these phenomena came P. J. Hogan's My Best Friend's Wedding. While not classified as a traditional musical, it features enough musical numbers that Hogan admitted to being worried that studio executives would think he was making a musical when they saw the early footage. The truth is that My Best Friend's Wedding defies classification-in musical terms, anyway. It's use of music to set mood, develop characters and serve as the main metaphor in the story, as well as to provide the hinge pin for the redemption of the main character in the end, was, and still is, revolutionary.
First of all, the incidental music by James Newton Howard (who has done music for about a hundred films, from Pretty Woman to next year's Batman Begins) is absolutely complicit in the storytelling of the film. If you were teaching a course in writing music for the movies, you could not find a better text-book example than Howard's music in My Best Friend's Wedding. It provides a wonderful psychological underpinning to the twists and turns of the plot. It is mischievous, despairing, surprised, scheming, sweet and countless other turns of the emotional wheel throughout the course of the film. The one thing it never is, is intrusive. If you have already watched this film a number of times, watch it once simply for the enjoyment of Howard's score-and, as you're doing so, try to imagine any of those scenes without it.
Now for the "musical numbers."
To the guy who "...hated, hated, hated..." the opening credits number, all I can say is, you just didn't get the joke. There always seems to be someone in the room who doesn't get it. It is exactly three minutes of pinks, pastels, lace and virginal sweetness ending with the angelic bride looking to heaven, the beatific spotlight illuminating her face, the solo riff of soul ascending in the background-all is sweetness and light, heaven on earth. Fadeout. What is the next sound you hear-even before anything appears on the screen? I'll let you check it out yourself. I hate explaining jokes.
Music is a metaphor in this movie. Music is Love. Music is Love with a capital "L". In the epistemological world of the film, the people who have one have both. And the people who don't have one, can't have either. Witness the next musical number: the karaoke bar. Kimmy (Cameron Diaz) "...can't sing a note" and is obviously mortified to find herself in a karaoke establishment. But when the mic is handed to her, despite her fear and protestations, she sings. She gives it everything she has, which isn't much, and, by the time she reaches the bridge, she is into it. The message is, of course, that we may not all be nightingales, but if you have Love, you have music. The fact that Kimmy is singing to her Michael (Durmot Mulroney) is one thing, but almost beside the point in the grand plan of the film's world. Michael tells her, "That was terrible...terrible!" and then throws his arms around her and kisses her. Of even greater significance is the fact that, by the end of Kimmy's number, what had been a hostile crowd when she started, now cheers her as an equal. They recognize she has IT.
The Crab house number is the musical scene most people point out as a favorite for its unabashed joy and exhilaration. It is a musical number almost unique in film. It has the spiritual rapture of a Baptist revival meeting. Everyone in the room sings. Everyone? Actually, no. In the entire room, there are two people with conflicted emotions at the moment. And they cannot sing. It would not be allowed. I should note here that of all the main characters, the only one in the entire film who never sings, who is incapable in the world of the film is Julianne (Julia Roberts). She is the subverter, the mole. She is the only one without the requisite "capital L" in her heart. If this movie were of a different genre, say a thriller, we would be waiting for the scene in which her inability to sing gives her away. We know she had it at one time. She and Michael apparently had one "hot" weekend. And we know they really were in love. How do we know? They had a song.
The next is the most intimate musical number in the film: the boat scene on the Chicago river. Michael has felt the stab of jealousy, seeing Julianne with the man he thought was her fiancé and he is working out the consequent self-doubts about the marriage. He notes that they (he and Julianne) never said they loved each other, never actually spoke the words. And in one beautifully timed moment, as the boat passes under a bridge and the two of them are standing in darkness, a kind of suspended time where the sun (the time-keeper) is out of sight, Julianne is given her opportunity to confess her love, but says nothing. With simple elegance, James Newton Howard's music highlights the poignancy of the moment as the sun reappears. Michael resolves himself to his decision to marry Kimmy and, as he sings their old song, The Way You Look Tonight, he and Julianne dance one last time. Listen carefully to J.N. Howard's accompaniment to Michael's singing. Jerome Kern's song has never sounded more sad. It's almost a dirge. Once again, Julianne can't sing. All she can do is try to wipe the tears away.
By far, the most bizarre musical number occurs on a balloon-filled tennis court. At first, there is no music-there is a crisis. Michael has told Kimmy he is calling off the wedding and now he's agonizing over that decision. How can there be music? Then, under pointed questioning from Michael, Julianne admits, "Of course she loves you. She's crazy about you." He will marry Kimmy. And in one of the strangest moments in the film, three young boys who have been inhaling the helium meant for the balloons, break into one verse of John Denver's "Annie's Song." Simple, straightforward, weird. Another disguised musical number.
What can I say about the next musical number except that it is the most sublime of the film. There are a few directors who boldly bring great music into theaters with them but none I know surpasses the minute and thirty second wedding processional in this film. In a film where music functions as a metaphor for Love, what music do you choose for Love's most important ritual-Burt Bacharach? John Denver? Jerome Kern? The processional is choreographed to an entire movement of Serge Rachmaninoff's lengthy (an entire performance takes all evening) a capella choral work, Vespers. It is sung in the original Russian, and the scene opens, not on the church, not on Kimmy, not on Michael, not on Julianne, not on Bree Turner. The first thing you see is-the choir. But of course. The music is drop-dead gorgeous. That this music was chosen instead of, for example, the Mendelssohn or Wagner wedding marches or even the 15,738,522nd wedding performance this season of something like The Wind Under My Wings, is a tribute to the intelligence and clarity of vision of both P.J. Hogan and J.N. Howard.
Finally-what do you do with Julianne? She entered the film without Love of her own. She never was comfortable "...with the yucky love stuff." (The best she can come up with in reviewing what might be to someone else a sensually delicious gourmet entrée is to write it up as "...inventive and confident...") Her avowed mission throughout the film has been the demonic destruction of the love of Michael and Kimmy. She is selfish and deceitful from the beginning. How do you convince an audience of her conversion in the world of the film? True, she has gone off and found Kimmy at White Sox Park, but that was something she had to do by way of making up to Michael for the crimes of the movie. On a deeper level-will she be saved? Julianne's redemption comes in the "toast" scene when she stands up, "confesses" her nightmare, and brings her offering to the married couple-a song. She has taken the first step, anyway.
In a world of disposable television shows, many of which are nothing but long advertisements for the CD's flashed on the screen even before the credits appear at the end, and movies whose soundtracks itemize rock groups rather than composers, it is a real treat to come across a film that treats its audience members as though they were adults.
From a musician's point of view, this film is a classic.
Description of My Best Friend's Wedding (Special Edition)
WHEN A WOMAN'S LONG-TIME FRIEND SAYS HE'S ENGAGED, SHE REALIZES SHE LOVES HIM HERSELF... AND SETS OUT TO GET HIM, WITH ONLY DAYSBEFORE THE WEDDING.One of the best romantic comedies of the 1990s, My Best Friend's Wedding not only gave Julia Roberts a delightful vehicle for her crowd-pleasing comeback, but it further distinguished itself by avoiding the conventional plotting of the genre. Julia plays a prominent Chicago restaurant critic whose best friend (Dermot Mulroney) is a former lover from her college days with whom she'd made a binding pact: if neither of them were married by the age of 28, they'd marry each other. Just when they're about to reach the deadline of their agreement, Mulroney arrives in Chicago to introduce Roberts to his seemingly perfect fiancée (Cameron Diaz) and announce their wedding in just three days. That leaves the shocked Julia with just three short days to sabotage the wedding and marry the man she now realizes she's loved all along. With potential heartbreak waiting in the wings, she'll either get what she wants or pay the price for her selfish behavior, and Ronald Bass's cleverly constructed screenplay keeps us guessing to the very end. Rupert Everett scored rave reviews for his scene-stealing performance as Robert's gay friend who goes along with her scheming (but only so far), and even as she makes her character's needy desperation disarmingly appealing, Roberts wisely allows Diaz to capitalize on her charming time in the spotlight. As the romantic outcome remains uncertain, the viewer is held in a state of giddy suspense, and director P.J. Hogan pulls off some hilarious scenes (like a restaurant full of people singing the Dionne Warwick hit "I Say a Little Prayer") that could easily have fallen flat in the hands of a less talented filmmaker. It's no surprise that this was one of the box-office smashes of 1997. --Jeff Shannon
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