The sequel doesn’t fall far from the remake.

Two pregnant chicks. Male demographic fleeing into the night, cries of “eeurw” and “gimme a break” issuing like feculence into the slipstream of retreat.

It was so easy to use someone else’s ideas to remake the 1950 film FATHER OF THE BRIDE that director-writer husband-wife team Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers use those same people’s ideas to remake the sequel those people wrote to their original film, FATHER’S LITTLE DIVIDEND (1951). (It’s not technically plagiarism, just like all those penis-enlargement e-mails aren’t technically spam…)

Hence, FATHER OF THE BRIDE PART II. Same cast as the 1991 remake film starring Steve Martin as flustered husband, Diane Keaton as glowing wife, Martin Short as wedding coordinator and raper of the English language, and Kimberly Williams as daughter. Oh, and Keiran Culkin (a much better actor than his brother Macauley) floats somewhere in the middle background as the Banks’ son.

George Banks (Martin) has just grown accustomed to his daughter being married, but now has to face the prospect of her baby’s birth and making him a – ulp! – “grandfather.” Clinging desperately to the last vestiges of his hip youth, he tries everything to feel young again, from dyeing his hair, to buying a sports car, to plonking his wife impromptu in the kitchen.

Thus arriving at the aforementioned Two Pregnant Chicks. (This film deviates from the original DIVIDEND in making the mother pregnant as well. I guess that was too far of a leap for 1950’s audiences.) Of course, you know they’ll be giving birth AT THE SAME TIME, otherwise, where’s the comedy? (All testes-bearers are welcome to stop reading now, as it is inconvenient holding your laptop while you are puking into the toilet.)

Martin Short is once again Franck, once just a wedding coordinator, now a catch-all character that turns up whenever a scene needs mutilated vowels to turn attention away from its lankness, his most valuable contribution to this film his sing-song axiom to the reticent George, “Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you! Party pooper! Party pooper!”

All the other actors return in their same roles, doing nothing different or interesting: BD Wong as Franck’s assistant, George Newbern as vapid husband Bryan, and Peter Michael Goetz as the father-in-law, used mainly as a device to argue with George over the baby’s surname and to incite slapstick moments with Dobermans.

Then there is Eugene Levy, who kills in a cameo as a very ethnic Persian(?) guy.

Steve Martin plays the same frazzled, uptight George, only this time, the filmmakers have bowed more to convention, insulting him more than in the previous film, with more outlandish slapstick and more disrespect, and though this film tries to insert moments that give insight to George’s midlife crisis (i.e. just when he thought he could relax, he’s back where he started), he seems to be more of a whiner than a comedic element; he is given only minimal opportunities to shine as the poignant force he represented in FATHER OF THE BRIDE (“Doctor, these women are my life…”).

A studied performance by Jane Adams as the delivery doctor keeps the film from flying too far into surreal.

Now all Diane has to do is find a GODFATHER for her baby…

END