WEDDING BELLE BLUES

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

She's cool. A restaurant critic who nibbles at life as if it were a dubious meal, Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) has, shall we say, neglected her emotional growth.

He's dim. A good-natured sportswriter who actually likes the bad pay and long road trips, Michael O'Neal (Dermot Mulroney) is one of those guys who believe the unexamined life is the only one worth living.

Sometime lovers who have decided to be best friends instead, they once made one of those silly promises no one expects to be held to: to marry if nothing better turns up before they reach the age of desperation, which, in their youthful innocence, they imagine to be 28. Now that the year is upon them, he suddenly announces he is getting married--to an heiress, no less--and she decides to put a stop to that nonsense.

Well, all right. Busting up society weddings has always been good comedic sport. We like to see spoiled, if redeemable, brats be embarrassed in front of their rich friends. In the classics of this subgenre (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story), it was the man (Clark Gable, Cary Grant) who caused the ruckus. But different tropes for different folks. And different times. It is theoretically O.K. to place a woman in the terminator role. And Roberts, that realest of nice girls, much of the time makes us believe that her insanity is temporary.

But there are too many moments in My Best Friend's Wedding when her ferocity reads as near motiveless malignity, especially as it is largely directed at Cameron Diaz's Kimmy, the bride-to-be. She's pert and pretty, smart and spunky--not at all someone we wish ill. When our sympathies shift to her, 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. Director P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding) stages a couple of marvelously giddy musical numbers, and Rupert Everett is terrific as the voice of sweet homosexual reason in the midst of this heterosexual hubbub. He--and the songs--probably belong in a different, better movie. But they give this one what edge and clarity it has.

--By Richard Schickel