My Best Friend's Wedding

TriStar Pictures | Release Date: June 20, 1997

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

50	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Leonard Klady

Ultimately, My Best Friend's Wedding works for some very old-fashioned reasons: It skillfully engages us in the story and its characters. And, for no additional cost, it has something to say about how we live, act, commit and relate.

Roger Ebert

One of the pleasures of Ronald Bass' screenplay is the way it subverts the usual comic formulas that would fuel a plot like this. Read full review

James Berardinelli

The film makers understand that it's possible for a romantic comedy to appeal not only to the heart, but to the mind as well. Read full review

Ruthe Stein

The real casting disaster is Mulroney. His blandness in the role makes it impossible to believe two beautiful women would fight over him. Read full review

Mark Caro

More thoughtful than advertised. And as a confection, it's less sweet and more flavorful than your average wedding cake. [20 June 1997]

Rick Groen

Although there are definite lags here, those "glittering" set-pieces are funny enough (at least one is hilarious) to stave off any prolonged yawns. Read full review

David Sterritt

Julia Roberts is brighter and spunkier than usual, and Rupert Everett steals the show. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Feels repetitive at times, but its star power and willingness to undercut convention come through at the end. Read full review

Film.comSean Means

Best of all are the supporting players. Everett (who played the Prince of Wales in "The Madness of King George") is smartly urbane, giving a polished refinement to the stereotypical "gay best buddy'' role.

Russell Smith

It does effectively recall those bygone days when impossibly attractive, charming, and endearingly flawed characters dressed to kill, smoked like creosote plants, and behaved atrociously on the way to rapturous romantic consummation. Read full review

Susan Wloszczyna

Mulroney is a drip with not a milliliter of chemistry with either woman. Roberts doesn't really seem to care about him so much as the fact that life is passing her by. Though, that may be the point. Read full review

David Ansen

A romantic comedy for an era of diminished expectations. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

This amiable comedy may not be hugely sophisticated, but Hogan does manage to make his attractive leads look like complete idiots, no mean achievement in image-obsessed Hollywood. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Julia Roberts glitters like gold dust, and she is ideally partnered with Rupert Everett, who gives a witty, wicked, bust-out performance. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

And when [Roberts is] on screen with Mulroney, who seems a frat-house jerk -- all dimples and a perma-tan -- we don't feel much of anything. Read full review

Elvis Mitchell

Obtuse, prettily decorative comedy. Characters burst gaily into song when, as often happens, they don't have anything better to do. Read full review

Richard Schickel

When our sympathies shift to [Cameron Diaz's Kimmy], the movie sours. It is no help either that Ronald Bass neglected to write (or Mulroney was unable to find) a character in Michael. Why all this fuss over this lox, we keep wondering. Read full review

Stephen Thompson

Just as crippling is the movie's tendency to waver back and forth between black comedy and Nora Ephron-esque schmaltz. Read full review

Lisa Alspector

The draggy narrative of this 1997 comedy is tough to sit through--there are even several overproduced musical numbers--but it does have an intriguing subversive element that I don't want to give away. Read full review

Ella Taylor

As [Roberts'] gay best friend, Rupert Everett is the only one with any backbone, any sense of humor or any decent lines. Read full review

Stanley Kauffmann

We get the feeling that, about nine-tenths of the way along, after he had all the characters knotted up, Bass suddenly thought, "Good heavens! I've got to find some way to finish off this thing." The way that he found is lame and makes a hash of what precedes it. [28 July 1997]

Rita Kempley

The story isn’t bright enough or grand enough to contain all of Roberts’s star power. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

Poor Roberts, pretty and perky as the day is long, hasn't a hoot in hell of bringing Julianne off. She's simply not actress enough, she doesn't have that suppleness that would enable her to sell the complexity of emotion, the jealousy, the irrationality, the meanness and the intelligence. Read full review