Father Of The Bride (Movie Review)

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A remake of a classic 1950 Spencer Tracy movie, Father Of The Bride is Steve Martin at his best. A fun comedy the entire family can enjoy, Father Of The Bride is great entertainment. When the daughter of George and Nina Banks announces her engagement, Nina is thrilled - but George has a difficult time handling the life changes that accompany his only daughter growing up for good. One of Steven Martin's funniest films, this is one movie you won't want to miss...

George Banks (Steve Martin) lives the perfect life. He has a great job, a nice house, a beautiful loving wife Nina (Diane Keaton), and two great kids. But George's world is shattered when his 21-year-old daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams) returns home from college to announce she's engaged. Her fiancée, Bryan MacKenzie (George Newbern), is a great guy, but when he puts his hand on Annie's leg, all sorts of feelings and emotions erupt inside George. It isn't her choice of a marriage partner, but rather her decision to get married at all that bothers George. He wants his little girl to remain a little girl forever, and he must now face the fact that he can't control the changes in his ideal world...

Father Of The Bride offers a number of hilarious scenes as plans for the wedding go forward. Annie and Nina hire an extremely feminine male wedding planner, Franck Eggelhoffer (Martin Short), whose annoying accent and take-charge attitude continuously rub George the wrong way. Deciding to have the wedding at the family home, the Banks's daily lives are turned upside down by all the last minute changes and typical pitfalls of an impending wedding. These comic sequences leading up to the big event are responsible for most of the humor and hilarity in the film (especially Martin Short's character). But will the wedding go off as planned? Will George come to accept his daughter's growing up? Or will she break off her engagement to Bryan? Father Of The Bride is a touching, romantic comedy you'll never forget.

Steve Martin stars as his usual likeable self, utilizing great body language and years of experience in the comic realm in order to provide the perfect likeness of a father in just such a situation. Not too over the top, and quite believable in every way, Father Of The Bride stands in stark contrast to the comedies of today which tend to go way overboard in their attempts to be funny. Outlandish comedies have their place, but sometimes its nice to able to laugh without having to suspend your sense of reality first. Father Of The Bride does well in this respect - similar to Christmas Vacation.

Overall, Father Of The Bride is a light-hearted family comedy with quite a bit of charm. Steve Martin and Diane Keaton form a likeable married couple, and the middle-class family life projected by the Banks family is something with which most viewers can identify. Because of its feel-good, light-hearted humor, Father Of The Bride is a definite must-see movie... Don't miss it!

About the Author

Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a movie review site [http://thedvdreport.blogspot.com] where you can find more reviews like this one of the Father Of The Bride (DVD) Review [http://thedvdreport.blogspot.com/2006/02/father-of-bride-dvd.html].