P.J. Hogan
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Isn't It Romantic (2019)
Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson
influenced by My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Plot Characters Themes Visuals
A “My Best Friend’s Wedding” gag repeated in too many rom-coms to number almost works — “karaoke night.”
DeVine mostly gets to represent a schlubbier version of the stolid leading-man type – imagine Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friend’s Wedding – thus allowing Hemsworth to steal his scenes as the outrageously good-looking billionaire who can’t stop calling Natalie “beguiling”.
As a pseudo-reluctant example of yet another formulaic romantic comedy, “Isn’t It Romantic” features fewer montages than you might expect, but there’s one right about the first-act turning point in which jaded New York architect Natalie (Rebel Wilson) lays out all the reasons she hates movies like “The Wedding Singer” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
There are nods to "Pretty Woman," "27 Dresses," "My Best Friend's Wedding" and plenty more here, as well as the rom-com staple of the out-of-nowhere big group sing-along.
Be it Pretty Woman or My Best Friend's Wedding .
Long Island City now looks like Notting Hill, there are perfectly choreographed karaoke sequences straight out of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and a total sexpot (Liam Hemsworth) is enamored with her.
Directed by Marc Forster, Christopher Robin feels like a thematic cousin to Forster’s acclaimed Finding Neverland (2004), a film about Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie that explored similar emotional terrain.
Filmmaker Marc Forster spends much of “Christopher Robin” trying to find that “Finding Neverland” sweet spot he worked so successfully in the 2004 Johnny Depp movie about James M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan.”
What probably got him this job, however, is Finding Neverland, his 2004 Oscar-nominated take on the story of J.M Barrie and the real-life inspirations for Peter Pan — its mix of whimsy, teeth-gnashing, fantasy, melodrama, name-brand actors and period-piece production design feels like a dry run for what he’s doing here.
Yes, “Christopher Robin” borrows a boatload of tropes from the “Peter Pan” of J.M. Barrie, the subject of Forster’s 2004 semi-biographical (very semi) film.
For instance, when he reminds her how much they enjoyed the Julia Roberts movie My Best Friend's Wedding, providing a droll recap of the plot.
In the film’s wittiest passage, played with bone-dry irony by Hamm, Walter Prime recounts a past date to see “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (“It was Julia Roberts… for a while, it was always Julia Roberts”), only for Marjorie to customize it into a more romantically old-school evening at “Casablanca.”
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Directed by David Frankel
influenced Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)
Plot Themes
Based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella but seemingly more inspired by " Legally Blonde " and " The Devil Wears Prada ," the movie strains to follow the tried-and-true formula of a perky fish out of water who is in over her head but with the determination and intelligence to prevail.
Meaning that this story about a New York professional waiting for her career to take off is a cut-rate version of The Devil Wears Prada.
Watching “Confessions” is akin to enduring a Nickelodeon pilot that attempts to cash in on the success of “The Devil Wears Prada” and the “Sex and the City” movie; audiences for the new film are expected to forget everything they know about the media, shopping, writing, the economy and human behavior in general for the plot to work.
Everything about the script is cookie cutter, a reversible wear "The Devil Wears Prada" knockoff that wears out its welcome.
A gloss of “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Legally Blonde” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Confessions” was directed by Brit P.J. Hogan (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”), adapted by Tracey Jackson, Tim Firth (“Kinky Boots’) and Kayla Alpert (“Ally McBeal”) and is at times wildly uneven.
Loosely based on the first two novels from UK writer Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series, Confessions of a Shopaholic is part romantic-comedy and part fish-out-of-water film in a very similar vein to The Devil Wears Prada and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.
This is the first time Peter is being played by a real-life boy, a fact much hyped by the filmmakers, and 12-year-old Sumpter ( Frailty ) does his best to live up to the expectations.
The live action contributes to the new focus; Peter Pan is played by Jeremy Sumpter , who was so effective in Bill Paxton's " Frailty ," and Wendy Darling is played by Rachel Hurd-Wood , who was selected at an open casting call and is delightful in her first role.
Now, to you and me, soft and pretty Jeremy Sumpter ( Frailty ), who plays Peter, may not be all that sexually dangerous, but give him a chance: he's only 13 or whatever.
It must have been a pickle to find the right Pan, but while Jeremy Sumpter's American accent is a little irksome, his performance here is otherwise just as good as his turn in Bill Paxton's directorial debut Frailty.
In this new rendition of the classic fairytale Jeremy Sumpter (the younger brother in 2002's "Frailty") is Peter Pan, who spies on Wendy Darling (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and loves to listen to her stories as much as her brothers, John (Harry Newell) and Michael (Freddie Popplewell).
Jeremy Sumpter (Frailty) is a playful and arrogant Peter.
The Dressmaker (2015)
Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse
influenced by Muriel's Wedding (1994), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), Unconditional Love (2002), Mental (2012)
Themes
The husband-wife team of Jocelyn Moorhouse (“How to Make an American Quilt”) and P.J. Hogan (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”) spare no unpleasantness, and fail to find laughs in much of it.
Yes, there’s the usual Winslet sorrows except that The Dressmaker has a script by P.J. Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) who writes another of his inimitable gay-friendly farces.
Much of “The Dressmaker,” which is based on a novel that Moorhouse and her filmmaker husband, P.J. Hogan (“Muriel’s Wedding”), adapted, has a fractured fable quality built on rubber-faced acting — save Winslet, shrewd enough to underplay as a contrast — and comic obviousness.
Director Jocelyn Moorhouse (Proof, A Thousand Acres) co-scripts with P.J. Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding), based on the fierce and fantastical novel by Rosalie Ham.
This cartoonish yet confrontational approach recalls the work of Moorhouse's husband P.J. Hogan, who collaborated with her on The Dressmaker's script (and whose own first feature, Muriel's Wedding, was set in the comparably horrid Australian town of Porpoise Spit).
Adapted by Moorhouse (returning to directing after an absence of 18 years) and her husband P.J. Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding), the film is set in the 1950s and stars Kate Winslet as Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage, who returns to her home town of Dungatar and announces, “I’m back, you bastards”, after a lengthy period studying dress-making in Paris.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Directed by George Cukor
influenced My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Plot
But the movie itself is a disappointment, as director P.J. Hogan ("Muriel's Wedding") and screenwriter Ronald Bass ("Rain Man," "Waiting to Exhale") attempt a screwball domestic comedy in the vein of "Holiday" or "The Philadelphia Story."
Wedding Crashers (2005)
Directed by David Dobkin
influenced Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Isla Fisher, the feisty redhead who stole every scene she had in Wedding Crashers, shows a continued flair for physical comedy coupled with a sweet and sassy style as Confessions of a Shopaholic's Rebecca.
But that would be unfair to IslaFisher, a comic powerhouse who had her breakout role as the nymphomaniac sister in Wedding Crashers (2005) and who seizes her long-awaited chance at stardom with both hands.
Isla Fisher, a steady scene-stealer in films such as 2005's " Wedding Crashers ," 2007's " The Lookout ," and 2008's " Definitely, Maybe ," receives her first lead role in "Confessions of a Shopaholic."
Fisher, you might recall, was the find of "Wedding Crashers" (she played the slutty sister).
Rebecca Bloomwood's (Isla Fisher, "Wedding Crashers," "Definitely, Maybe") job at a gardening magazine is not equal to her taste in designer fashion.
Star Isla Fisher (“Wedding Crashers”) is charming enough, and a gifted physical comic, but this material is so predictable and leaden that even she has no prayer of keeping it afloat.
A quintessential “chick flick”/date film targeted squarely at twentysomethings too young to realize the shameless re-treading of 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, the picture ends up being far better than it has any right to be thanks largely to a fine cast, solid direction and an unusually effective rewriting effort by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan.
At least 1997's very similar "My Best Friend's Wedding" had a final trick up its sleeve and ended on a less obvious and more bittersweet note; this sex-reversal knockoff doesn't have the courage to do anything nearly as drastic.
Let's hope not, or the folks behind "Made of Honor" -- essentially the same plot as 1997's "My Best Friend's Wedding," but with a gender twist -- will have to do some serious reimbursement.
Having just finished watching the NFL draft this past weekend I completely understand the logic of the ‘‘Made of Honor” filmmakers — trade one Julia Roberts’ character in ‘‘My Best Friend’s Wedding” for one Patrick Dempsey and viola — brand new movie.
Swap the girls for the boys and you've got "My Best Friend's Wedding" all over again.
Julia Roberts scored a hit in My Best Friend's Wedding, where she tried to stop said friend's wedding and grab him for herself.
In screwball comedy, of course, there's a great tradition of devilish chicanery (think of the way Katharine Hepburn's dizzying deceptions made Cary Grant's head spin in Bringing Up Baby).
Indeed, visually the picture's above reproach, opening up the play well beyond the parameters of the stodgily theatrical Hook and 2003's lovely but claustrophobic Peter Pan.
A perverse lollapalooza of loaded images and disquieting implications, P.J. Hogan's live-action Peter Pan is this year's most intriguing Freudian shipwreck, resurrecting the darkness and poetic pessimism of J.M. Barrie's play--and Peter and Wendy, Barrie's own novelization--that has been all but forgotten since Disney's well-regarded 1953 treatment.
Oddly, the most notable additions are the wonderful character of Aunt Millicent (the always marvelous Lynn Redgrave); a touching, last-moment adoption of a Lost Boy who is straight out of an early talkie Our Gang short, Small Talk; and plot devices lifted from the film of Mary Poppins.
Updating My Best Friend's Wedding for the millennial set, director Christian Ditter's Love, Rosie casts a winsome Lily Collins in what might once have been Julia Roberts's role (think eyebrows, not teeth) — though in this case, marriage is no real obstacle to true love.
Clearly, there’s romantic-comedy potential in this situation, since variations on it have been done before—and far, far better in, for example, Four Weddings and a Funeral and My Best Friend’s Wedding.
Instead, he heads to Harvard while she winds up holding the baby (not his), paving the way for umpteen airport dashes, missed connections and predictable Four Weddings/My Best Friend’s Wedding showdowns.
Legally Blonde (2001)
Directed by Robert Luketic
influenced Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)
Plot Characters Themes
Based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella but seemingly more inspired by " Legally Blonde " and " The Devil Wears Prada ," the movie strains to follow the tried-and-true formula of a perky fish out of water who is in over her head but with the determination and intelligence to prevail.
If you gave Bernie Madoff custody of your life savings mere days before the FBI knocked on his door last December, your timing still wouldn’t be as wretched as that of Confessions of a Shopaholic, a bright, cheery hybrid of Legally Blonde and Sex and the City that seeks to offer escapism from our current economic crisis via the story of a precious young Manhattanite who just can’t stop being fiscally irresponsible.
Despite a plot filled with contrived and cheesy moments and virtually no palpable romance between Rebecca and Brandon, what makes the film mildly engaging is its lively, energetic cast, especially Isla Fisher who radiates plenty of offbeat charisma much like Reece Witherspoon did in Legally Blonde.
A gloss of “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Legally Blonde” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Confessions” was directed by Brit P.J. Hogan (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”), adapted by Tracey Jackson, Tim Firth (“Kinky Boots’) and Kayla Alpert (“Ally McBeal”) and is at times wildly uneven.
On a high level, Confessions of a Shopaholic is trying to fuse The Devil Wears Prada with Legally Blonde , but it lacks the darkly satirical edge of the former and the frothy innocence of the latter.
Hogan's film is pitched somewhere between the director's cut of Ridley Scott's Legend and the ravaged theatrical version of the same, a picture at war with itself between the desire to present the source faithfully black and the instinct (or financial imperative) to appease a popular perception of the story as one without edges, a schizophrenia underscored by James Newton Howard's light-hearted musical accompaniment to the film's murder and eroticism--misdirection akin, almost, to the attendant banjo music in the rape sequences of Last House on the Left.
Gyllenhaal gives a delightful performance, but the film's secret weapon is Rupert Everett ("My Best Friend's Wedding") as Mortimer's wealthy friend of 'perverse' sexual appetites and penchant for inventions.
My Best Friend's Exorcism (2022)
Directed by Damon Thomas
influenced by My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Themes
The title is a play on the film My Best Friend’s Wedding, which is excellent as we’re throwing the typical girly stereotypes out of the window and bringing in the more dark and creepy horror themes of the supernatural.
I'm reminded of My Best Friend's Wedding , where the African-American tradition of popular music is, yes, appropriated for emotional shorthand.
It’s not something we see much of in otherwise great romantic comedies — My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) might be the last one to truly get it right — and Wu’s film nails its intricacies and pitfalls alike.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Directed by Jon M. Chu
influenced by My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
Characters
Oliver, who refers to himself as the gay "rainbow sheep" of the family, willingly completes petty favors for his uncaring aunties—a sheepish descendant of the "gay best friend" George from My Best Friend's Wedding, whose wedding-crashing antics stood in direct opposition to capitalist heteronormativity.