Father of the Bride 1 & 2 by Touchstone Home Entertainment

Actors

• Steve Martin
• Diane Keaton
• Martin Short
• Kimberly Williams-Paisley
• Kieran Culkin

Format

• Color
• NTSC

Editorial Review

Father of the Bride

This '90s update of the Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor hit is a mix of the pleasant and the silly, a nice enough movie but a little too controlled to become particularly interesting. Steve Martin plays the aging patriarch who is threatened by his daughter's engagement and not-quite-willing to let her go. The writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers provides Martin's character with a perhaps too-broad range of comic responsiveness to the situation, some of it gentle (a ritual game of basketball between dad and his little girl) and some of it slapstick (Martin sneaking around his prospective in-laws' house and encountering a guard dog). Martin Short turns up as a wedding coordinator–which has deliriously delicious possibilities–but his inventiveness doesn't quite strike the chord this time. —Tom Keogh

Father of the Bride Part 2

Everybody important from the first film, including the writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers, regroups for this sequel involving a pair of pregnancies. Steve Martin's patriarch has a crisis when his married daughter (Kimberly Williams) is with child, and an even bigger one when his middle-aged wife (Diane Keaton) announces that another bambino is on the way. Martin Short is more effectively used this time around (he played the wedding coordinator in the first film), and while this movie's inevitable climax has both women giving birth on the same chaotic night, the overall effect of the film is less contrived than its predecessor. —Tom Keogh