Father of the Bride

For those who like a light comedy diversion, this was pretty good stuff. Spencer Tracy is excellent as a "father of the bride" and he gives us a good idea of what it's like to have a daughter married off. Of course, Hollywood exaggerates a bit, and not everyone's daughter looks like Elizabeth Taylor, but that's what made this fun and, I think, a hit movie.

It must have been a good story and pretty successful for a re-make to be made 40 years later, starring Steve Martin. I watched both versions and would select this one over the re- make. As in most cases, there were more values and family togetherness in the classic-era movies than what Hollywood usually shows today. Nothing against Martin, but it was too difficult trying to top Tracy's performance in here.

This version actually was honored quite a bit, up for a handful of Academy Awards including "Best Picture." I don't remember this movie being THAT good, but everyone's sense of humor is different. Also, not being a father it was hard for me to relate to the mom and dad's predicaments here. Tracy and Joan Bennett played the parents. However, married friends of mine who saw this movie all loved it.

Obviously, some of this is very dated and a little unrealistic. Any father who still sees his daughter as someone in pigtails and tomboyish when she looks like Taylor ain't paying attention! Then again, maybe all dads see their daughters as little girls, no matter what age.

We see something else employed in this film you don't see anymore: someone talking directly to the camera as Tracy does here. I kind of like that. Daffy Duck did that, with hilarious results. So did Groucho Mark. It made us, the audience, feel we were involved with wedding, too.

All in all, still a good film which holds up reasonably well if you can look at it as a farce, and a comment with weddings - something that will never change!

"Father of the Bride" is a mainly delightful family comedy which benefits from a strong central performance...

One night at dinner, daughter Kay casually announces her engagement... Father and mother react on cue...

Following practically all the events of Edward Streeter's charming novel, the Oscar-Nominated screenplay is a series of comic and warm set pieces: the loving father asks his daughter to invite his future son-in-law for dinner; girl's parents meet boy's parents; prospective bride quarrels with prospective groom... The vignettes are applied with the light Minnelli touch at its most charming, and they are acted with captivating nonchalance by the incomparable Spencer Tracy in the title role and by the beautiful performances of Joan Bennett, Liz Taylor, and Don Taylor…

As the complaining middle class father, thoughtful to his daughter's welfare and watchful as to the distributing of his money, Tracy is incredibly amusing... Torn by jealousy, Tracy is all good-natured father exhausted by the complete weight of the problems leading up to the happy day...

But it's an ensemble show, and as the typical spoiled daughter of a typical mid-American bourgeois, Elizabeth has one of her joyful screen moments, altering and urging her beloved ones with such gentle, persuasive, winning, and gracious manners

"Father of the Bride" is Spencer Tracy's picture. His performance as the overwhelmed father of the bride is outstanding.

The plot is simple. Stanley Banks'(Tracy) daughter Kay (the beautiful teen-aged Elizabeth Taylor) announces her impending marriage to Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). Mother (Joan Bennett) gets into the act and before you know it the bills are mounting and father is going greyer by the minute. There is the usual pre-marriage argument between the two lovers, the ever increasing guest list, a frantic rehearsal and finally the big day itself with father trying to maintain his sanity throughout.

The supporting cast is excellent. Leo G. Carroll is good as the befuddled caterer, Melville Cooper does a funny bit as the church deacon and the still beautiful Billie Burke along with Moroni Olsen appear as the parents of the Groom.

"Father of the Bride" under the able direction of Vincente Minnelli, is the kind of family comedy that we rarely see anymore.

My favourite performance of Spencer Tracy's from all the work he did in thirty-seven years in the movies - here he plays harassed father Stanley Banks struggling to cope with the comedy of his daughter Kay's wedding. Kay is played by the young and beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, who had just been married for the first time in real life; and her intended is played by Don Taylor, an actor I haven't seen in anything else, and can't really remember doing anything of interest in this. The family is completed by Joan Bennett as Tracy's wife, and Rusty (later Russ) Tamblyn as their youngest child.

Although the movie does play up the comic potential of the wedding situation - the dad dreams of losing his trousers as he walks down the aisle, for example - it also has moments of poignancy, especially in the last few sequences where the parents dance together in the post-party mess of their once-pristine house. This kind of thing puts the movie above the ordinary, and is exactly what was missing in the Steve Martin remake years later.

And don't let me forget Billie Burke and Moroni Olsen as the groom's parents - really funny!

A middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income lawyer has his domestic tranquillity destroyed when his 20-year-old daughter announces that she is going to get married. Stanley Barnes, nominal head of the Barnes household, finds himself increasingly marginalised as the wedding approaches.

Tracy underplays Stanley and judges his performance beautifully. He is the staid old dinosaur at the centre of the hubbub. Whereas Steve Martin in the 1991 version played the father as a manic plunger into other people's swimming-pools, Tracy can raise a laugh by lying motionless in bed, staring into space.

Stanley's wife Ellie is played by Joan Bennett, and hers is the comedy of manners, manoeuvring through the various social minefields which she encounters. She restrains Stanley from yelling in front of the domestic help, harbours doubts about Kay and Buckley (unlike Diane Keaton's character in the remake) and gets nervous and embarrassed in front of the in-laws. It is touching for us to learn that she regrets not having had a white wedding of her own, and this gives her a credible motivation for the spendfest which follows.

This film is surer of itself than is the remake, at least in part because in 1950 the social demarcations were clearer and more solidly-grounded. The Barnes family lives in a bourgeois community in which the 'rules' are universally understood. There has to be an engagement party, and a formal visit to the in-laws. These procedural steps en route to the wedding are unquestioned. In the 1991 version, the notion of 'being middle class' has expanded and grown nebulous. The in-laws are simply richer, not socially superior. The milestones towards the marriage are fumbled for - no-one is comfortable with the protocol. Even the man-to-man talk feels inappropriate.

Interestingly, Stanley is able to get away with being a garrulous bore. Martin strives for the viewer's sympathy, whereas Tracy is assured enough to let his character have shortcomings. He does not need to swing from ballustrades to get laughs, because he has enough presence and authority simply to be what he is, and to allow the humour to arise out of the situation.

Tracy can, however, mime with the best of them. The slightly-too-short waistcoat is great fun, and his silent reactions to the bust-up and reconciliation are marvellous. The film contains lots of goodies, like the expressionist nightmare or the quiet moment when Tracy is alone with the floral displays, seemingly hemmed-in by the frippery of the wedding. Director Minnelli is a master at ensemble 'babble' scenes, and this film has some good ones.

Verdict - light comedy, supremely well-crafted