by Hadley Hury
or at least
three reasons, the unusual romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding
is a near-perfect vehicle for Julia Roberts. First, the role and her performance
are likely not only to expand audience perceptions about her capabilities
as an actor but -- as important at this particular moment in her career
-- catch popular expectations about her movie-star persona off-guard as
well. Second, the production team percolates with a remarkable creative
synergy. It is comprises one of the smarter and more eccentric of the new
breed of young directors, P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding); screenwriter
Ronald Bass, revealing (after years of reputable reliability for rather
workmanlike scripts such as Rain Man) a welcome capacity for whimsy
and even occasional, daring silliness; and master cinematographer Laszlo
Kovacs, who, 
after
more than 30 years of distinguished camera work, gives My Best Friend's
Wedding a mastery of visual tone and technique that is fresh, energetic,
both emotionally direct and delightfully stylish. Third (but not least),
in her carefully chosen and felicitously detailed vehicle, Julia has along
for the ride an ensemble of actors who are not only talented but attractive
and engaging in the extreme: Rupert Everett, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz,
and a memorable supporting cast.
If the whole is not quite as great as the sum of its parts, My Best Friend's Wedding nonetheless has more than enough charm and interest in individual moments and scenes to keep us entertained in a manner to which we are sadly unaccustomed. As is absolutely necessary for acting good comedy -- but too rarely realized in American mainstream films -- these actors invest the zany bits with the same complete emotional commitment that they give to the more thoughtful, serious sequences. The result is a set of performances that mutually reinforce one another in taking risks, in encouraging a sort of naked emotionality in both the film's comedy and its more sobering, almost rueful, romance. These elements -- coupled with director Hogan's eye for unexpected possibilities (whether humorous, dramatic, or both simultaneously) in a scene, and Kovacs' brilliant handling of everything from slapstick action to lushly moody landscapes and interiors, and especially his gorgeous treatment of the lead actors -- combine to make a film of enormously sensuous texture. Its visual richness is so palpably a part of its rapt emotion that -- even when the script falters under its load of tenuously high concept -- there still seems to be more to the movie than meets the eye. Whatever it's not, you get a lot more with My Best Friend's Wedding than just another summer movie.
The
premise of the story is so coolly never-you-mind that it recalls those star-powered
triumphs of the harebrained comedy genre of the 1930s and '40s like Bringing
Up Baby or The Mad Miss Manton. Best friends Julianne (Roberts)
and Michael (Mulroney) made a pact after a brief college affair to marry
each other at age 28 if neither of them had fallen in love with anyone else.
As her 28th birthday approaches, Julianne is devastated to learn that Michael
is about to marry -- she discovers that she has loved him all along. She
flies to Chicago to break up Michael's engagement to Kimmy (Diaz) a very
sweet, very rich young woman, whom Julianne, just to complicate things further,
really likes. (Kimmy, in her guilelessness, is the perfect foil to Julianne's
connivings.) What ensues is an on-again-off-again, frequently hilarious
race to the appointed hour at the altar. Two royal antecedents of screwball
comedy that involve urgent marital decision-making -- 1941's My Favorite
Wife with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne and Preston Sturges' 1942 classic
with Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, The Palm Beach Story -- particularly
come to mind as the film's sleek high foolishness mingles bittersweetly
with its more reflective moments of how all most certainly is not
fair in love and war.
Along with Roberts' intelligent and funny work as a self-involved, amorally assertive young professional, Dermot Mulroney takes a large stride forward from the Hollywood brat pack as the soon-to-be groom beset by would-be brides. As scripted, the role isn't as well developed as it might have been, but Mulroney has old-fashioned dreamboat good looks (the role would have been played by John Payne in the `40s), and is nicely understated with his comedy and very capable in the dramatic stretches.
A great treat of the film is Rupert Everett's performance as as Julianne's friend George. Everett takes what might have been a tired, if not patronizing, stereotype of the gay male confidant and with inspired grace and good humor makes him very smart, very joyful, very appealing. He comes close to stealing every scene in which he appears and the audience begins to anticipate when he'll turn up again and what he may do. It's a performance of great comic warmth and dignity, the test of which is a rehearsal luncheon scene which culminates in George leading the entire restaurant in singing the Dionne Warwick hit I Say A Little Prayer. Unaccountably -- and quite wonderfully -- it works.
George Clooney is a natural as Batman -- cool, remote, with a lightly ironic sense of humor. His limpid spaniel eyes have just enough twinkle to suggest that the Caped Crusader really has a heart.
Batman & Robin -- the fourth entry in the current series and the second to be directed by Joel Schumacher (and to feature Chris O'Donnell as Robin) -- capitalizes on TV-star Clooney's husky, worldweary voice and I-don't-want-a-fight-but-don't-tread-on-me attitude in an attempt to add more human flesh to the character.
And that's okay. Or at least it's an unpretentiously scaled aspiration. (Truth to tell, you can only go so far in treating this pointy-eared cartoon guy as if he were Hamlet or Uncle Vanya.) Uma Thurman is great fun as the seductive villainness Posion Ivy and Arnold Schwarzenegger is surprisingly good as the chilly Mr. Freeze. (Schumacher frames several shots of him that have the haunting look of 1920s German expressionist film.)
In the end, it's not the enhancement of Batman's human heart or an analysis of his psychological motivations that carry the movie. (Akiva Goldsman's script is never more than banal and frequently it's moronic.) No, it's the impressive special visual effects, a terrific group of character actors which includes Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, and John Glover, and -- as much as any single element -- the richly imaginative and beautifully realized production design of Barbara Ling. Some of the other films in the series have been more arch or more frenetic in their visual design, but none have had the lush and truly interesting integrity of Ling's view; it's a sort of dark but glossily inviting, Golden Illustrated Book version of Batman's nether-urban landscape.