My Best Friend's Wife

Rating:
Summary: It's O.K.......Mike Weston (mweston)
Review: fw: 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.


Rating:
Summary: A Solid Little Low Budget Film with a Heart
Review: While MY BEST FRIEND'S WIFE will not go down in the annals of filmmaking as a sleeper, wannabe great movie, it does have its charm. The writers Doug Finelli and Mitch Galane have produced a smart script and have taken a possible tired subject of wife swapping and turned it into a tale of real marital fidelity, no simple feat! Two neighboring couples are 30-something close friends, successful Yuppies who have been married for a long time, but each owns a bit of the desperation that faces that age group - that old 'is that all there is' that strikes before settling into parenting and the long run (?boredom?) of sameness. Through a pact of mutual agreement, not without reservations on the part of each of the four, they agree to swap mates for a one-night stand. How this plays out and affects both the couples and the individuals is the moment of truth the film depicts. Doug Finelli directs with a sense of good comic timing and without a fear of allowing the characters to play out their vulnerabilities. The young cast is refreshingly unknown: John Stamos partnered with Tara Westwood and Daniel London partnered with Meredith Salenger. The budget restrictions are obvious in the shooting of the movie, but the message is intact and is an important one, bravely presented. 5 stars for concept, 4 for execution.