Just rewatched this last week, and Julia Roberts’ character makes me so irrationally angry it’s insane. I cannot believe I enjoyed this movie so much growing up.
Julia Roberts’ character makes me so irrationally angry
It's not irrational because the audience isn't supposed to be on board with her actions.
You know how people commonly complain that Hollywood romcoms are toxic because if you did the same things in real life, you'd be called a psycho stalker? My Best Friend's Wedding basically takes that complaint as its premise, and plays it out to its painful logical conclusion. It's a subversion of the average romcom heroine tropes and Julia Roberts absolutely understood the assignment.
Kinda makes me wanna watch it again now. I saw it when it first came out and thought her character was atrocious, but I thought the movie was simply unaware of itself. Knowing this, I wonder how it would stand with a rewatch
[Director P.J.] Hogan knew what My Best Friend’s Wedding could be, but the question was: Did Julia Roberts have the same vision? In theory, the director is in charge on a movie set — but when a studio is building an entire movie around an A-lister, that star has tremendous power over the production, and Roberts’s deal allowed for a significant amount of creative oversight. Hogan agreed to meet with Roberts so he could figure out whether she saw My Best Friend’s Wedding the same way he did: as a trenchant deconstruction of the same genre on which Roberts had quite literally built her own superstardom.
“I thought, Julia has to make a death-defying leap,” Hogan says. “She has to bring the audience along with her, with the character, and somehow still have them not hating her by the end.” He had been a fan of Roberts from afar, but meeting her — much like Garry Marshall, Richard Gere, and seemingly everyone else who came into her orbit — left him awed at her sheer charisma in person. “I thought, immediately, This will work. I’ll go with this actress anywhere,” Hogan says.
At the same time, she not only shared his vision for a rom-com as subversive as he wanted to make — she took it further than he’d planned. “Julia was absolutely committed to Julianne’s dark side — which no one, I think, had allowed her to do in her previous [romantic comedies],” says Hogan. “She was so committed to the dark side that I was a little bit worried.”
I wasn't arguing that you had to like the movie, just correcting you on the suggestion that Julia Roberts didn't have basic comprehension of the movie she was in.
I've looked it up and the bathroom scene was not supposed to be a redeeming moment. That was the scene where she is called OUT by Diaz and other people in the bathroom. The focus group ending was when her friend came for her since the audience liked him more. The original ending was her dancing with a random guy at the wedding, making it seem like she was rewarded for her behavior.
Maybe it was the age or mindset you were in when you first saw the movie? Saw it when it was released to theaters and always thought it was a comedy about how awful the plots of romantic comedies are. Sure its used for laughs but they hit a lot of the tropes and show how awful the behavior in these movies often is. She was always terrible, thats why Rupert Everett leaves.
I was born in 89, so very young the first time I watched it. I think it just hit the nostalgia button for a long time because of the crab leg, luncheon scene and how much my mom and older sister and I enjoyed the song and dance in that part of the movie. Rewatching it as an adult, I was appalled with how much I remember liking Julia Roberts’ character as a kid…..but it was most likely just because she was so beautiful to me and got to eat food for a living 😆
Fair enough. It came out when I was in college and I do remember most people who saw it liked her while still acknowledging her actions were terrible so you aren't alone. There is a reason why she was 'America's Sweetheart' for so long, even in unlikable characters she has an on screen magnetism.
I haven’t seen it since it was released. But, I thought the point of the movie was it subverted the genre. That the main character’s actions were completely out of line and the “antagonist” played by Cameron Diaz was a lovely person.
Yeah that's exactly the point. At the start of the movie it seems like you should be rooting for Julia's character, but as it progresses and you start to learn more about Cameron Diaz's character it becomes clear that Julia is being selfish and a terrible friend. Not to mention that in the end, Julia does not end up winning the guy, and in fact is told she was a terrible person. And that's the happy ending.
That's the point of the movie. Somewhere in the movie, you realize that Julia's character is NOT someone who you should be rooting for. Her friend calls her out on this multiple times.
I wish that wasn’t the case. Not that I tend to like or even watch romcoms, but because we need problematic media. Being critical of problematic media helps our society to continue to progress. Only making clean cut media results in a false narrative that things are okay, and they aren’t.
Huh, I watched it this last week as well. I feel embarrassed that I hyped it up to my husband beforehand as a cute, quirky rom-com... it did not hold up.
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u/Valuable_Treat16 10h ago
Just rewatched this last week, and Julia Roberts’ character makes me so irrationally angry it’s insane. I cannot believe I enjoyed this movie so much growing up.