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Another 90’s throwback: My Best Friend’s Wedding

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I’ve been digging through my digital files and searching the horrible search engines of Disney+ and Prime Video looking for the movies that I was so thrilled to go see at the movies or rent growing up. I’ve been prompted to by the many 90’s movies I’ve been seeing shown on TV lately. One movie that has been on repeat on the many channels is My Best Friend’s Wedding.


I can still remember it was billed as America’s Sweetheart, Julia Roberts’ rom-com comeback. I can’t recall the article or the interview, but she talked about how the long hair extensions were back and fans were going to love the movie written by another 90’s cinematic icon, Ronald Bass.


If you can recall, there was a period of time where Julia Roberts was testing out a shorter hairdo to go along with her more serious roles like Mary Reilly. Critics partially blamed her hair transformation as turning off her fans who did not run out to buy tickets for those movies. I would rather blame the horrible movies over the horrible haircuts.


Anyways, my siblings and I were so excited to go see My Best Friend’s Wedding as it was one of the big summer movies of 1997. 1997 was definitely a huge year for movies and a great time to be a teenager who loved movies. As a moviegoer who wasn’t yet jaded and tired of fake Hollywood romance movies, I loved it!


My Best Friend’s Wedding checked off all of the points needed for a blockbuster romantic comedy. It had a gorgeous cast led by Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. There’s a funny twist involving a gay best friend. It’s set in a cool American city like Chicago. And it’s set in the upper class world of talented twentysomethings.


It’s a fantasy that has just enough real life elements to make you believe you can experience such a world, but there’s a fair helping of Hollywood magic sprinkled all over it to transport you away from your boring everyday life and make you feel like you actually went somewhere after the movie’s finished.


And that’s how I feel with a lot of movies these days. Although a lot of them are exciting and I’ve loved seeing them like Avengers Endgame or Furious 7. I don’t have that same feeling of awe and wonderment.


Maybe it’s because I’m older and movies don’t have that same effect on me, but there’s also a noticeable distinction between the movies that came out in the 90’s and perhaps the early aughts versus those that came afterwards. Now mind, you, if I were to go back into the 80’s and 70’s, those movies were even more fantastical. I think the 90’s and 2000’s were a time when the weight scale between reality and fantasy began to tip more evenly.


However, there was still a combination of innocence and preternaturalness of movies back then that appears to be missing in present day films. I can’t quite explain it other than if you watch movies from back in the 90’s or early 2000’s, those movies are just a few shades shy of reality. This gap between reality and fantasy is what I as a movie goer needs from a Hollywood movie. I don’t want a reality show or documentary-style fictional stories. We have enough of the warts of every day-ness. I’m not paying $15 plus another $15 for a drink and popcorn to watch a literal translation of life. I’m here for a Hollywood experience.


My Best Friend’s Wedding is a big Hollywood experience. It’s fun and feels kind of real, but you know it’s totally fake. When I turned 28, I don’t think me or any of my friends were like we have to be married by 28 or we’re old and dead. None of us were even remotely as successful as Julianne Potter, the food critic, or Michael O’Neal, the sports writer.


If you read my previous essay, I mentioned how I had wanted to work in movies and so I did an info session with our city’s local entertainment reporter. That was when I was around 15. When I was 28, that reporter was STILL the local entertainment reporter. He retired like 5 years ago as the chief entertainment reporter.


When I was 28, I was working in web production and ecommerce analytics for a major retailer and living in one bedroom apartment in a big city. I was able to afford to live in a nice area and all that jazz, but I was galaxies far, far away from Hollywood. But, I’m still A-OK with a movie like My Best Friend’s Wedding. I can co-sign it because it’s a fun film that I wish my life could have been like and if not, it gives me something to dream about.


I would love to see Julia Roberts star in another movie like My Best Friend’s Wedding. Not with the same plot but with the same kind of fantasy and magic. I don’t want to see movies like Eat Pray Love or August: Osage County. Life’s already depressing enough. And now that it’s 2022, life’s even more depressing. Hopefully Hollywood will one day go back to its rom com formulas from that era because there’s a reason why people are hankering for nostalgia these days.





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