Father of the Bride




And then something inside began to hurt.

Here all of Nancy Meyers' manipulative tendencies can be seen in perhaps their best light.

George Banks (Steve Martin) has everything. Good job, house, and family, especially his only daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams), who's the apple of his eye. Of course, being a hyperactive over reactor, he gets a little uptight when she comes back to Rome toting a fiancée, the oh so perfect Bryan (George Newbern). And on top of it, George is fastidiously cheap, which causes some problems when the wedding bill approaches astronomical proportions.

Remaking a movie about a loving but overprotective father learning to let go of his only daughter is sweet and actually calls for the sugary/perfect world (mostly anyway) that Meyers always creates, though in this case she wasn’t a director yet. Perhaps director Charles Shyer is just a little bit better at glossing over the fact that all of the characters have perfect lives that we all want. Or at least that's what they want us to want. And the coincidences, oh the coincidences. Like Annie going to Rome to meet and fall in love with a guy that lives within driving distance of her back in the States. But quibbles aside, the focus of the story largely succeeds where it counts. Between Steve Martin’s antics there’s a real sense of emotion that he’s really letting go of his daughter, perhaps best framed by the all so perfect wedding. The humor is also done appropriately enough, siding with Martin’s character most of the time with the general situation and rising prices of the wedding while being nice enough to turn on him when he’s at his lowest for laughs. A few characters like Martin Short’s Frank are so outrageous and contrasting to George that it’s hard not to smile.

Steve Martin heads a decent cast and gives one of his best normal guy performances and manages to be pretty fun at it as well. Diane Keaton is mostly window dressing, and Kimberly Williams and George Newbern are both sweet and young as the bride and groom to be.

In the end it’s nothing new or extraordinary, but because it’s honest and occasionally funny, it makes for an amiable picture.



-The Gnome