Movie Review of “Father of
the Bride”
don’t
think of myself as a particularly compulsive film-goer,
truffling about for hidden treasures. I am not
fundamentally in love with the film medium itself to
the extent that I am with print. A person’s love
of a medium or a genre can be measured by the extent to
which he finds value in those examples of it that are
less than great. The truly besotted fanatic will have
lost his ability to distinguish between the first-rate
and the second-rate. The lover who has kept his wits
about him will know the difference between the two, but
will cherish them both – will cherish them all.
He’s a connoisseur. He will find in an otherwise
terrible movie the one scene or the one shot that is
innovative or interesting, and that will redeem the
whole experience for him.
In fact, even if the movie has no
redeeming qualities, viewing it will not have been a
waste of time. The experience will have increased his
knowledge of the medium itself and, when you love
something, you can never know too much about it. When
you love like that, you are with the gods and your
mercy is never overwhelmed by your judgment. For mere
mortals, we must own up to our impatience and
irritability. I don’t want to see good movies or
pretty good movies or okay movies. I want to see great
movies.
Readers of this
column may have gotten the impression that I’m a
soft touch when it comes to movies, an easy grader.
This month’s column should help correct this
idea. It’s true that I generally only seek out
those movies I think I’ll like. It’s also
true that I tend to write about the ones I’d
recommend to others. But, if it’s worthwhile to
alert people to good movies, then it’s just as
worthwhile to alert them to bad ones. And it will be
worthwhile to correct any false impression that my
approval of a movie is lightly earned and therefore to
be regarded lightly.
Like almost all
other phenomena that yield themselves to statistical
analysis, movies arrange themselves on a bell curve of
quality. The biggest chunk – about 40% – is
in the middle somewhere: competent but not
earth-shaking. Traditionally, these would get a grade
of C. The Bs and the Ds would each count for another
20%. Only one out of ten, on average, will be truly
wonderful (A) or truly wretched (F).
This statistical
truism, combined with my picky viewing habits, means
that I don’t often come across movies that I
truly despise. So, enjoy yourself while you can. Here
are three of them. I came across these reviews in an
old notebook, where I wrote them down for therapeutic
reasons, to vent my spleen. I’ve revised them
somewhat.
just saw the remake of “Father
of the Bride” (1991)
on the flight from Los Angeles to Boston and I hated it
so much I just had to get a few comments down on paper.
The makers of this tripe shouldn’t be allowed to
get away with it scot-free.
This move is a vile
revenge fantasy of the worst sort of feminism, smarmy
and obnoxious enough on the surface, but brimming with
a real castrating energy underneath. At the same time,
it hides behind the cheap facade of a romantic comedy
like a syphilitic whore dolling herself up so she can
infect as many people as possible.
The real force of
the movie is directed towards humiliating males,
especially the father. Steve Martin’s George
Banks is a total nebbish. Every time you think he is
going to finally assert himself and do the manly thing,
he meekly backs down and eats some more shit. If movies
were rated for their psychological violence, for the
bruises they inflict on both their characters and their
audience (sneaky bruises that don’t show), then
this movie would deserve an X and be shown only in dark
alleys and Women’s Studies programs.
Far from being a
light-heated romp, this is, at bottom, a dark bondage
and discipline fantasy. The mother, Nina (Diane Keaton)
and daughter Annie are the dominatrices. The father,
son and son-in-law are the slaves. The women are
saying, “You’ll pay $40,000 for this
wedding and you’ll pay it with a smile, you
worm.” The humiliation of the male reaches its
climax in the jail scene, when the Steve Martin
character lets his wife dictate the terms of his
release. He is a complete schmuck, worthy only of
contempt, yet the movie tries to pass him off as a
tight-wad who needs to be softened up by women. His
wife is a cast-iron bitch. Not for her any weak moments
of feeling loss or regret at her daughter’s
marriage. The males, on the other hand, are weaklings
one and all, or, in the case of the wedding
coordinators, mincing queens. The groom is a rich
computer nerd, while the bride gets the more important
sounding job of architect, though we see nothing to
indicate any interest or involvement by her in her
field. It’s evident that she’s an
“architect” because it’s a synonym
for “boss.” Not that any of the other
characters in this story are interested in anything
other than how expensive things are. Can anyone doubt
that parents who hire “wedding
coordinators” are the same sort of parents who
hire professional clowns for their children’s
birthday parties? They’re raw material for
satirical comedy, not romantic comedy.
This movie pushes
all the easy buttons associated with wedding imagery,
trying to lull us into a suggestible mood, but beneath
its heavy makeup of sentimentality this is an ugly,
mean-spirited fantasy of virago women taking a couple
of rich old fools (father and groom) for all
they’re worth. Beneath the nasty feminism it
espouses rather overtly (nasty but safely fashionable)
is the nasty femininity it reveals unwittingly, a dark
side of women. At the end of the day, what you have
here are a couple of predatory women looking for a rich
old fool to manipulate, so they can surround themselves
with lots of pretty things. Maybe they don’t feel
very pretty by themselves. Maybe they aren’t.
This kind of woman wants to castrate the man, to steal
his power, because, at bottom, she despises her own.
Such women despise the feminine and confirm what I have
always suspected, that “feminism” is a
misnomer for their movement, which should more properly
be called “emasculatism.”
By all means, go
rent this movie if you get off on B&D; if you like
lazy, dishonest, mean-spirited art; and if you think a
father’s love is measured by how much money he
forks over for his daughter’s wedding.
