Father of the Bride (1991 film)

Father of the Bride is a 1991 American comedy film starring Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Kimberly Williams (in her film debut), George Newbern, Martin Short, B. D. Wong, and Kieran Culkin. It is a remake of the 1950 film of the same name. Martin portrays George Banks, a businessman and owner of an athletic shoe company (called Side Kicks), who, when he finds out his daughter is getting married, does not want to give her away. He eventually learns to live with his new son-in-law and realizes that as long as his daughter is happy, he is happy.

Father of the Bride
Theatrical release poster
Directed byCharles Shyer
Produced byCarol Baum
Nancy Meyers
Howard Rosenman
Screenplay byCharles Shyer
Nancy Meyers
Frances Goodrich
Albert Hackett
Based onFather of the Bride
Frances Goodrich
Albert Hackett
Father of the Bride
by Edward Streeter
Starring
Music byAlan Silvestri
CinematographyJohn Lindley
Edited byRichard Marks
Production
company
Distributed byBuena Vista Pictures
Release date
  • December 20, 1991 (1991-12-20)
Running time
105 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20 million[2]
Box office$129 million

The film opened to positive reviews, and became a major box office success, earning more than six times its budget. With its success, a sequel, Father of the Bride Part II was released in 1995. This was Nancy Meyers and Diane Keaton's second of four films together, the first being Baby Boom (1987); the others were Father of the Bride Part II (1995) and Something's Gotta Give (2003).

Plot

George Banks is the owner of a successful athletic shoe company called Side Kicks in San Marino, California. George narrates what he had to go through with his daughter's wedding. His 22-year-old daughter Annie, who just graduated from college, returns home from Europe and announces that she is engaged to Bryan MacKenzie, despite their only having known each other for three months. The sudden shock turns the warm reunion into a heated argument between George and Annie, but they quickly reconcile in time for Bryan to arrive and meet them. Despite Bryan's good financial status and likeable demeanor, George takes an immediate dislike to him while his wife, Nina, accepts him as a potential son-in-law. George does not want to let go of his daughter.

George and Nina meet Bryan's parents, John and Joanna MacKenzie who are wealthy and live in a mansion in Bel-Air. John reassures George by also expressing how shocked he had initially been at Bryan's engagement, but George quickly gets into trouble when he begins nosing around the MacKenzies' financial records and eventually ends up falling into the pool when cornered by the MacKenzies' vicious pet Dobermans.

All is forgiven, however, and the Banks family meets with an eccentric European wedding coordinator, Franck Eggelhoffer, who sneers dismissively at George's complaints about the price of the extravagant wedding items, including a flock of swans. The high price, and the seemingly excessive number of wedding invitations and cost of each dinner, begin to take their toll on George and he becomes slightly insane. The last straw occurs when he retrieves his old tux from the attic - with the expectation that at least IT will still fit - and as he struggles to put it on - it promptly rips when he bends over. He leaves the house to cool off, but ends up causing a disturbance at the supermarket. Fed up with paying for things he doesn't want, he starts removing hot dog buns from the store's 12-bun packets so as to match the 8-dog packets of hot dogs. He ends up getting arrested, but Nina arrives to bail him out of jail on the condition that he stop ruining the wedding.

With help from Nina and Franck, George becomes more relaxed and accepting of the wedding, particularly when Annie and Bryan receive rather expensive gifts from extended family members, but the wedding plans are put on hold when they have a fight over a blender Bryan gave her as a gift, which only gets worse when she refuses to believe his story about George's earlier antics. George takes Bryan out for a drink, initially intending to get rid of him for good, but seeing his heartbroken face and genuine claim that he loves Annie, George has a change of heart and finally accepts him. He confesses to Annie that what happened at the MacKenzies' house was true, and she and Bryan reconcile.

Despite some last minute problems with the weather, the wedding is finally prepared, almost one year after Bryan and Annie's first meeting. They marry and the reception is held at the house, despite a nosy police officer objecting to the number of parked cars in the street. Unfortunately, George misses Annie throwing her bouquet and is unable to see her before she and Bryan leave for their honeymoon in Hawaii. The film picks up George's narration from the beginning as the wedding reception ends. Annie calls him from the airport to thank and tell him that she loves him one last time before they board the plane.

With the house now empty and the wedding finished, George finds solace with Nina and dances with her.

Cast

Production

Touchstone Pictures tapped the studio's finance partner, Touchwood Pacific Partners, to fund the production of the film.[3]

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was scored by Alan Silvestri and was influenced by jazz and Christmas instrumentations. It contains the following tracks:

  1. "Main Title"
  2. "Annie's Theme"
  3. "Drive to Brunch"
  4. "Snooping Around"
  5. "Pool Cue"
  6. "Annie Asleep"
  7. "Basketball Kiss"
  8. "The Wedding"
  9. "Snow Scene"
  10. "Nina at the Stairs"
  11. "The Big Day"
  12. "Annie at the Mirror
  13. "Pachelbel Canon"
  14. "The Way You Look Tonight" - Alan Silvestri, Dorothy Fields
  15. "My Annie's Gone"
  16. "The Way You Look Tonight (Reprise)"
  17. "End Credits"

The following songs are also featured in the film:

Reception

The film opened to generally favorable reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 70% of critics gave it a positive rating, based on 43 reviews, with an average score of 6/10. Its consensus states that "while it doesn't quite hit the heights of the original, this remake of the 1950 classic is pleasantly enjoyable, thanks in large part to winning performances from Steve Martin and Martin Short."[4] In contrast, it received 51/100 on Metacritic based on 17 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and called it "one of the movies with a lot of smiles and laughter in it, and a good feeling all the way through."[6] Desson Howe of The Washington Post praised Martin for his performance in it, writing that "it is so funny, it's almost sublime. The explanation is simple: It's all Steve Martin."[7]

The film drew $15 million on its debut.[8] It grossed $89.3 million in the United States and Canada[2] and $40 million overseas,[9] for a worldwide gross of $129 million.

Awards and nominations
MTV Movie Awards
BMI Film Awards
  • 1993, won, Best Movie - Father of the Bride
Young Artist Award
  • 1993, nominated, Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Motion Picture - Kieran Culkin

Remake

On February 21, 2018, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that remakes of several films are in development as exclusive content for The Walt Disney Company's streaming service Disney+ with one of those projects named in the announcement as Father of the Bride.[10]

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gollark: It's unnecessary code duplication and more room for fragility.
gollark: It does all the network checking itself.
gollark: Yes, because they needed to add a bunch of code to *it* to handle that.
gollark: > journalctl is not greatWell, I can conveniently check "hmm yes what has this service outputted in the last few minutes", follow logs, and specify stuff like "dnscrypt-proxy should only start when the network goes up".

References
  1. "Father of the Bride (PG)". British Board of Film Classification. 1992-06-01. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
  2. Father of the Bride at Box Office Mojo
  3. Harris, Kathryn (May 21, 1992). "A Dilemma for Disney : Films in Its Latest Financing Deal Have Mostly Been Clunkers". LA Times. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  4. "Father of the Bride (1991)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
  5. "Father of the Bride Reviews, Ratings, Credits". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  6. Ebert, Roger. "Father of the Bride :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Chicago Sun Times. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
  7. Howe, Desson (December 20, 1991). "'Father of the Bride'". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  8. Fox, David J. (1991-12-30). "Movies: 'Hook' leads with an estimated $23 million for the five-day Christmas period. 'Father of the Bride' and 'Prince of Tides' pull in about $15 million each". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-12-22.
  9. Groves, Don (February 22, 1993). "Hollywood Wows World Wickets". Variety. p. 85.
  10. "Disney Planning Another 'Muppets' Reboot for Its Streaming Service (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. February 21, 2018. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
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