144. My Best Friend’s Wedding

Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast

What if there was a romantic comedy where you were rooting for the evil “other woman” but you didn’t know it? Well, Hollywood boldly went there in 1997 with My Best Friend’s Wedding. And what a charming evil woman we have as our protagonist here, in Jules (Julia Roberts). She’s an utter delight, as is Kimmy (Cameron Diaz). The only stretch here is that either would find anything appealing about this dimwitted drip named Michael (Dermot Mulroney).

Director P.J. Hogan called My Best Friend’s Wedding “a romantic comedy that wasn’t very romantic.” And it is very impressive to see how well the movie balances its many tensions—to have Julia Roberts, the lead, be someone the audience roots for, but not too much; to have her rival Cameron Diaz be able to hold her own against Roberts but not steal the show; and to have the dullard male lead not seem like an oblivious jerk.

Well, it worked. This movie rules. We both loved it. But we need to make fun of stuff, so we do a lot of bad impressions and ask a lot of unimportant questions: Michael and Jules were definitely still boning even when they were “just friends,” right? Why does the movie have to make Cameron Diaz’s character 20, instead of 25 (the age of the actress)? Did people really compose emails and then set them aside for their secretaries to send at the end of the day? And is it okay for a sportswriter who covers the Chicago White Sox marrying the daughter of the team’s owner? This movie is about ethics in sports journalism, is what we’re saying.

Bonus video: We pick the weddings from movies we’d most like to attend. Watch it on our Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, or TikTok.

Next week: We’re revisiting Mortal Kombat (1995), covering the movie properly this time, because on our old episode we only talked about the movie for a few minutes

Subscribe to our Patreon, Load Bearing Beams: Collector's Edition for $5 a month to get two extra episodes! patreon.com/loadbearingbeams

Time stamps:

00:04:58 — Our personal histories with My Best Friend’s Wedding

00:11:29 — History segment: The career of Julia Roberts; development and production of My Best Friend’s Wedding with director P.J. Hogan and writer Ronald Bass

00:30:09 — In-depth movie discussion

02:05:38 — Final thoughts and star ratings

Sources:

“‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ Is a Rom-Com You Can Still Talk About for Hours” by Jake Kring-Schreifels | The Ringer (2022) - https://bit.ly/4gDUEWi

“The Oral History of My Best Friend's Wedding” by Seija Rankin | E! Online (2017) - https://bit.ly/3ZYAzTm

From Hollywood With Love by Scott Meslow (2022) - https://amzn.to/3WbQFrY

Artwork by Laci Roth.

Music by Rural Route Nine. Listen to their album The Joy of Averages on Spotify (https://bit.ly/48WBtUa), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/3Q6kOVC), or YouTube (https://bit.ly/3MbU6tC).

Songs by Rural Route Nine in this episode:

“Winston-Salem” - https://youtu.be/-acMutUf8IM

“Snake Drama” - https://youtu.be/xrzz8_2Mqkg

“The Bible Towers of Bluebonnet” - https://youtu.be/k7wlxTGGEIQ

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