I’ve been reading the excellent Film Experience Blog for a while now. Today the blog features an entry on 90s romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding, and it’s a very interesting read. I saw that movie in the theatres with some friends in the ninth grade, and while I can’t say that I remember it as “the best comedy of the nineties” the way CanadaMatt does, I always enjoy it when people have praise for random pop-cultural stuff that critics usually look down their noses at, and I really appreciate CanadaMatt’s queer-theory-angle take on the film:
Maybe there won’t be marriage.
Maybe there won’t be sex…
But by god there will be dancing.…is transgressive in its acceptance and extollation of a non-normative union (for mainstream Hollywood, at least). The couple dance off happily, as the singer sings “forever and ever”. Here the gay man is not relegated to homosexual pet status, he is the leading man, the moral centre of the film, and ultimately its hero. The relationship between Julianne and George is one of equals, and the film celebrates that at its conclusion.
Also, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I think My Best Friend’s Wedding had a pretty great soundtrack. I remember borrowing the CD at the library after I’d seen the movie, and I really have to give it credit for introducing me to some of the more memorable love songs from the 20th century, some in cover versions, other in original versions. Diana King’s “I Say a Little Prayer” is probably the one that most people associate with the movie, but there’s also a wonderfully ironic version of “Wishin’ and Hopin’” that is used as the opening sequence of the film:
This track, along with the soundtrack’s cover version by Nicky Holland of “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”, was what introduced me to the genius that is Dusty Springfield, and I will be forever thankful for that. After hearing the Nicky Holland version I went up into the living room and found my father’s old Dusty Springfield record and left it on the grammophone for weeks and weeks afterwards. I still think that “I Just Don’t Know…” is one of the best break-up songs ever. Just listen to that crescendo in the bridge (“Like a summer rose…”). Devastating!
In the more optimistic end of the spectre, there’s also the up-beat ”Tell Him” with The Exciters with its wonderful folk-lore-ish sound and its lyrics that directly contradict the book He’s Just Not That Into You. I tend to agree with the ideas of HJNTIY, but I still love the song:
(Dude, that is one weird video, though. Bears? And lions and swans? What?)
There’s also “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (in a version by Mary Chapin Carpenter) which is just such an adorable song, and there’s “What the World Needs Now”, which never did much for me personally, but I suppose it’s a classic in its own right. And then there’s “The Way You Look Tonight” which Tony Bennett lends such a wonderful warmth in his version, you can almost see the candlelights and taste the dizzying red whine of a romantic dinner:
So I always thought it was a good soundtrack, but CanadaMatt’s perspective makes me like it even more. Because with his comments in mind you could say that the producers used the great love song classics from the past decade in order to tell a brand new kind of love story in the ’90s: A love story in which the hero might be a homosexual man and the heroine a loving single woman. That is a nice thought.









