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My First Chick-flick Love Favorite Movie Quote: "The great thing is that this over-reaction gets progressively less with each generation, so your kids could be normal." Do you ever really know what you're going to like before you try it? I don't remember why I rented Father of the Bride during my senior year of high school, but I do remember enjoying Father of the Bride so much that, like a little kid with a Pixar movie, I watched it several times in the first sitting. A remake of the 1950 classic of the same name starring Spencer Tracy and Liz Taylor, Father of the Bride is a fairly basic premise. George Banks (Steve Martin) has a relatively simple, successful, and happy life. He loves his wife Nina (Diane Keaton), their young son Matt (Kieran Culkin), and of course their beautiful, successful, and independent daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams). By his way of thinking, George's life is perfect. Enter the monkey wrench; as George narrates at the beginning of the film, "as a father you worry about your daughter meeting the wrong kind of guy, the kind of guy that only wants one thing, and you know what that one thing is because it's exactly the same thing that you wanted when you were that age... but the day comes when you stop worrying about her meeting the wrong kind of guy and start worrying about her meeting the right kind. Because that's when you lose her." Daddy's little girl has grown up and met the right man, Bryan MacKenzie (George Newbern), while studying abroad, and intends to marry him. George is less than thrilled that his recently graduated, 22-year-old daughter is getting married to an "independent communications consultant". There's an assortment of comedic characters and moments led by Martin Short's effeminate, foreign wedding coordinator and his strange alien dialect that everyone but George can understand. While the movie spotlights the comical downward spiral of George's mental grasp of the events surrounding the wedding, the heart of the film is George's love, respect, and insecurity regarding Annie. He truly wants what's best for her; it just takes him a while to figure out that what's best is for him to step back, and that stepping back into a lesser role doesn't mean that she no longer needs him or loves him. By his own admission at the beginning of the movie, George isn't big on change, but change is the essence of life and something he ultimately embraces because it means embracing the woman that his little girl has become. Steve Martin is as adept at drama as he is comedy, and Kimberly Williams lights up a room every time that she enters with her warmth and girl-next-door looks. So pretty and quirky is Williams' style that it's no stretch to believe what anyone sees in her; on the day of the wedding when the camera looks into her eyes and she bites her bottom lip, I fell in love with her (and have followed her career ever since). I wish that I more thouroughly understood the spell that Father of the Bride cast on me nearly twenty years ago. It has a mixture of film elements that, like my greens and mashed potatoes, I prefer to keep seperate, yet I'm drawn into it whenever it's on. It was the first "chick-flick" that I ever loved and, aside from obvious staples like the Star Wars, Terminator, and Aliens films, it's on a short list of movies that I know that I've seen more than ten, twenty(?), fifty (?) times. Like the kind of pure, true love that a person should feel before they walk down the aisle (or stand waiting at the end of it), there was a magic spark between me and this flick that's energy has remained throughout the years. email this review to a friend
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May 12, 2008 9:44 PM