Overrated and overhyped

Awesome Movie

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Have you ever heard the phrase "They're not laughing with you. They're laughing at you"? That pretty much describes this movie. It will provoke laughter. Not because it's successful at being intentionally funny, but because it's so unsuccessful at every blessed thing it tries to do. I do have to give it credit for giving an early warning to all viewers by having the opening credits list a "Special appearance by Carol Alt". Carol Alt, for pete's sake! How mentally and culturally out of it do you have to be to think a Carol Alt cameo deserves a mention in your opening credits? The producers, writers and director of My Best Friend's Wife might just as well have received one communal credit as "A bunch of guys who don't know what the hell they're doing".The story opens in 1970s suburban New Jersey with two boys. Steve is sex obsessed and Eric can't get out of his own head long enough to let sex or anything else inside. And again, the movie gives you another early warning that it's going to be terrible. Young Eric is shown reading a Playboy but reads out of it the sort of sex letter found in Penthouse. How can anyone make a good sex comedy if they can't keep their skin mags straight?After that prologue, the film jumps to the present day with Steve (John Stamos) and Eric (Daniel London) still living in suburban New Jersey. Their lives have both fallen into ruts, though Steve's the only one bothered by it. He's so bothered by it, in fact, that Steve suggests some wife swapping. Well, the movie states that Eric has been joking about the subject for years, even though that doesn't make a lick of sense for his character, and Steve's the one who finally decides to run with it. Steve's wife Claire (Tara Westwood) warms to the idea quickly. Eric's wife Ami (Meredith Salenger), however, wants nothing to do with it. Then after an evening with her emotionally abusive parents (Jessica Walter and Tony Roberts), Ami consents to the swap as long as Eric agrees to finally impregnate her.Steve and Ami gleefully boink, while Eric can't go through with it for Claire. That causes problems, which Steve, Ami and Claire decide can only be resolved by having Eric go ahead and screw Claire, which they cajole, beg and pressure him to do. Eric gives in and they all live happily ever after. No, I'm not joking. That's how it actually ends.In addition to stinking all around like a rotting yak corpse, My Best Friend's Wife is notably terrible for having more superfluous supporting characters than you can shake a stick at. There's Ami's parents, Steve's douchey work buddy, Eric's two douchey work buddies, Steve and Eric's longtime best friend Chuck (Bill Sage) and of course, Steve's horny boss (the specially appearing Carol Alt). If you combined all 7 of them together, you'd wind up with 3/4ths of a legitimate supporting role. The vacillate between annoying and useless and I don't know how at least 3 of them didn't get cut out of the screenplay.The theme of this movie is about how Steve and Eric are freaked because their lives turned out to be completely normal as well as their obsession with not having has as much adventurous sex as their baby boomer predecessors. That's not a half bad premise, but how does banging your best friend's wife and having him bang your wife work as the most logical response to that situation? There's a billion other things these guys should have done, or at least tried to do, before wife swapping came up on their option menu.And besides being plain old bad, My Best Friend's Wife is also so damn labored. The same ground is trod over and over again in scene after abbreviated scene until it feels like you're stuck in the movie Groundhog Day.Meredith Salenger does a nice job and is nice to look at and there are two scenes in a strip club, so at least this movie has some nudity. Everything else is a mess you can sarcastically mock but not enjoy. Even if my best friend were married to a 100 year old toothless leper, I'd rather have sex with her than watch this thing again.

John Stamos did a great job, but can't say that about the rest of the cast. The movie is thought provoking with a load of laughs. Made me love Stamos' acting so much because of the funny lines he delivered with an absolute straight and serious face. I had to pause many times just so I could hear the movie through my own laughter! The best parts of the movie are when Stamos is trying to convince his wife - he actually goes all out to make his point across. That took guts on his character. And the second one, was when Stamos was stating the DOs and Don''ts to his friend and wives- his facial gestures and body language in this scene makes the whole movie worthwhile.It was a sad pain to watch Daniel London. He almost made me turn the movie off. Very whiny and sissy. But he does play a very crucial role. I recommend to watch this either by yourself or with a very happy crowd if you are throwing a friends get together.

I enjoyed this film, and it did actually make me think about relationships, specifically monogamy and such. The writing and direction are clever at times, and the performances are uniformly efficient at telling the story. That's the best and worst I can say about it, meaning nothing was really stand-out, but nothing was *wrong* per se, either.

Two childhood best friends grow up and are still best friends at age 30, but now are both married, one to his first girlfriend. Their lives have become far more boring than they would like, and what were once jokes about wife swapping begin to be taken seriously, first by the men and eventually by the women, as a last act of wildness before becoming grownups.The comedy works fairly well, but the actors are not good enough to make the premise believable or to carry off the dramatic scenes. To the writers' credit, the complications that ensue are not simply the obvious ones. The film has high production values and it tied for the audience award at Cinequest (the San Jose, CA film festival) for best dramatic feature, so perhaps it has a chance of getting distribution. I saw it on 3/2/2002.