Picking Nits
What kind of sports writer Michael is; a $39,000 salary against billionaire spending; a 20-year-old dropping out to marry after a month or two; a best friend given three to five days' notice; a four-day wedding ending Sunday night in a church; the Sunday pre-wedding brunch; a drop-dead-gorgeous New York food critic with a book at 28; Kimmy having no maid of honor; the ugly purple bridesmaid dress; 'you're the only person I trust'; the welcoming billionaire family
In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:41Read transcript
- What kind of sports writer was Michael: a generalist, a gamer, maybe regional, since all the references are Texas, San Antonio and College Station; making about $39,000 a year in 1997 while she gives up everything to follow him, except they are spending billionaire money and hitting up dad.
- The entire relationship timeline makes no sense: a month or two and they are getting married, she is 20 and dropping out of college, the parents would have stopped it and never thrown a wedding; a sub-nitpick is billionaires being this nice.
- Julianne gets Michael's call the Wednesday night before his wedding, giving his supposed best friend three to five days' notice; a real best friend would have been told earlier and told when he met someone, and the pact needed caveats built in; the film half-covers it with her not checking her phone machine while on a book tour as a food critic.
- The wedding itself is a four-day affair starting Thursday with a Sunday night church wedding, which makes no sense: they are not Jewish, and billionaires could have gotten the Saturday church spot; a Catholic explanation about a 6 p.m. Sunday slot after the holy window is offered and dismissed.
- A brunch the Sunday morning before the wedding asks too much of guests, though one host likes being fed and prefers a pre-wedding brunch where attendance is required to the annoying post-wedding one; another's stepmother insisted on a 9 a.m. Sunday brunch where everyone was hungover and kids ran around.
- The food critic nitpick: a New York food critic at 28 who has already written a book is ridiculous, the opening scene gets criticism backwards by having the waiter present the plate to the critic rather than her dining incognito, her 'inventive and confident' verdict is terrible criticism, and a drop-dead gorgeous 28-year-old critic is not a real thing, since the job takes 20 years to get.
- Every choice about the food critic job was 100 percent wrong; the climactic jab that she is a loser food critic treats having a job as a bad thing from someone dropping out of college at 20, and the plate presentation is as absurd as a sports writer interviewing batters at home plate between pitches; when a critic comes in, the restaurant pretends she is not there.
- Cameron Diaz has no maid of honor because hers broke her pelvis line dancing in Abilene and there is no backup; one host likes it as a strategic move revealing she does not trust Julia Roberts and is neutralizing her by cutting off her recourse, while another cannot invest in someone with no backup friend and thinks she should have demanded more for her own wedding.
- TV and movies always skip the fact that the person getting married has no friends, as when Dylan McKay marries Tony (as transcribed) on 90210 with bridesmaids he met two weeks earlier, or the unseen bridesmaids on Succession in seafoam green like Julia Roberts' non-wedding to Kiefer Sutherland, a detail that teaches you she is a bad person.
- The purple bridesmaid dress has the ugliest possible color and sparkles on the halter; and when Kimmy tells Julia Roberts she is the only person she trusts, that is not true, which the defender calls smart; how close could the friends have been if he waited until three days before the wedding.
- Her whole family being billionaires who run Chicago yet are nice and welcoming to a sports writer does not hold, though the dad does have an intimidating conversation about how much he makes; being 20 and dropping out of the best schools is the one nit a host cannot get past, a waste of money if you never graduate.