'Wedding': No Bliss

After moping about in the drab British dramas, "Michael Collins" and "Mary Reilly," Julia Roberts comes back home to romantic comedy. Unfortunately, her extravagant good looks and screen-swallowing charisma are somewhat wasted on "My Best Friend’s Wedding," a misbegotten attempt to update the genre that only proves the enduring -- if not downright inviolable -- appeal of the boy-meets-girl scenario.

Director P.J. Hogan’s follow-up to the offbeat, Australian, ABBA-scored "Muriel’s Wedding," this mainstream American variation is also wildly unromantic and sappy with silly ’70s love songs. Hogan’s instincts are right: The genre has grown stale in this more sexually permissive, more socially fluid age. But his execution begs the question: Why get engaged in the first place?

Scripted by "Waiting to Exhale" writer Ron Bass, the story revolves around the wicked machinations of Julianne Potter (Roberts), a feisty food critic determined to stop an old flame’s marriage. Thus, she hatches any number of dastardly schemes, most of which backfire, in a cruel, largely humorless campaign to wreck her "best friend’s" future happiness.

While it’s easy to forgive the Pretty Woman anything, her chicanery would make much more sense if the milquetoast Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) were worth the fuss. All’s fair in love, so they say, only what Michael and Julianne share is not romantic passion or even real kinship, but a neurotic attachment. Though they made a transition from lovers to just friends nine years earlier, Michael still carries a torch for Julianne. Unable to make long-term commitments, she has been wholly content with the arrangement. Her complacency is shattered, however, when Michael announces his upcoming marriage to Kimmie (Cameron Diaz), a beautiful billionaire’s daughter who innocently and affably thwarts all Julianne’s bitchy plans.

Diaz can be dazzling in her own right, but she’s made to play the mud hen opposite Roberts, an overwhelming explosion of big hair, bigger teeth and lens-shattering effervescence. Alas, the story isn’t bright enough or grand enough to contain all of Roberts’s star power.

While Mulroney fades into his thankless role, Rupert Everett proves the better match for the feisty heroine as George, her dapper editor and spiritual soul mate. When Julianne pretends they are engaged to make Michael jealous, Everett is hilariously obliging. And if this were a vintage screwball comedy, she would have walked off happily ever after on George’s exquisitely tailored arm. Alas, as George points out and knows only too well, "All the best men are gay."

Hmmm. Doesn’t exactly leave you walking on air.

MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING (PG-13) — Contains naughty language.