|
|
FATHER OF THE BRIDE (Dec 1991)
Director: Charles Shyer.
Writers: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer.
Starring: Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short, Kimberly Williams, Kieran Culkin, B.D. Wong, Peter Michael Goetz, Kate McGregor-Stewart.
 |
UNTITLED
by
Jon Dunmore ©
A film with charm and grace and laughs, yet still pandering to that egregious "family movie" formula of making the father of the house the idiot of the movie.
A remake of the 1950 Spencer Tracy film of the same name, FATHER OF THE BRIDE's hook is its charm: in this romantic comedy, the star and narrator, is not the romantic protagonist - it's all happening to his daughter, and the movie tells it through his eyes as a doting father.
Hmm... a romantic comedy soring more than 5-cucumbers.
The moment where she tells of her meeting a man in Rome and he's wonderful and we're going to get married. All he sees is a five-year-old blathering this. That part is hilarious.
Such a well-made film,
Diane Keaton is glowing as the mother - all I want to do is mother HER.
Unlike most romantic comedies, people's reactions are quite like people's reactions, rather than movie reactions.
George does redeem himself with a surfeit of poignancy
which - we presume - makes him sound more sensible than the movie has been teeling us he is all along.
When Steve Martin was still Steve Martin, coming so soon after PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987) and DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (1988) - he had not yet succumed to the execrable idiocy of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (2005).
tHEY still fall for that old fallback of making the man of the house the idiot of the movie.
END
|
|
|
FATHER OF THE BRIDE (Dec 1991)
Director: Charles Shyer.
Writers: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Nancy Meyers, Charles Shyer.
Starring: Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short, Kimberly Williams, Kieran Culkin, B.D. Wong, Peter Michael Goetz, Kate McGregor-Stewart.
|
|
