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.
