The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 271 Days to go: 264
Movie #106: Father of the Bride
I love this movie, always have, but it really screwed me up. Father of the Bride is a very sweet, funny story about a man named George Banks (Steve Martin) whose baby girl Annie (Kimberly Williams, pre-Paisley) is all grown up and getting married. He’s terrified and resistant and can’t believe what a huge ordeal a wedding is — not that he’s all that sure his daughter should be getting married at 22, no matter if he and his wife got married at 21. And I thought this was how it should be. I kind of joke pretty often about how everything I know I learned from movies, only it’s not really that much of a joke. I was pretty isolated as a kid, not very close to my parents and always feeling like a terrible outsider everywhere I went — whether I was at school or at home, with friends or family or whomever. I didn’t fit in this world, didn’t understand it, didn’t know how things worked. So I took my cues from movies (and books and TV shows and anything else I consumed). Father of the Bride didn’t inform all my assumptions about life, but it definitely had a lot to do with my assumptions about weddings.
For one, I thought college was where I would meet the man I was going to marry, that six months together would be plenty of time to decide he was the one, and that 22 was a perfectly good age for all this to happen. Now, of course, some people do meet their future spouses in college, and some people do decide to get married after six months together, and some people do get married at 22, but they don’t do it because that’s the timeline they’re supposed to do it on. They do it because that’s when it feels right to them. Not that it didn’t feel right to me, too, but looking back on it I’m fairly certain I went on the path that I did because I expected it to go that way.
I remember being 21 and going through a terrible breakup and feeling, more than anything else, what a huge waste of my time that relationship had been. I’d spent so much time with this guy, and for what? Nothing. He just stole all the time away from me that I could’ve been meeting the Actual One. (Don’t think I don’t cringe at the memory, but I’m trying to be brutally honest here.) Now, I actually didn’t marry my first husband until I was 24, but I met him at 22. Met him and moved in with him and got engaged to him all before I turned 23. Because that’s what couples did, right?
Not only that, but I had this whole idea that the wedding itself should be a grand affair. Maybe I didn’t need wedding coordinators like Franck and Howard (Martin Short and B.D. Wong), but an elegant cake and gorgeous flowers and an elaborately laced gown with a long flowing train and veil were musts, obviously. And the guest list should include everyone I’d ever known, and the catering should be exquisite, and it should be the most beautiful, sophisticated, elegant affair anyone had ever attended. Just like in this movie. Save for the insanely beaded and laced flouncy dress I wore, it was nothing like that.
Obviously, that marriage did not go well. (Shocking, I know.) It’s not that I hadn’t loved him or been happy with him for a time, but I barely knew myself at that age and I sure as hell didn’t realize how fundamentally different he and I were. A few years in, and I was feeling trapped. But I’ll get to that in a later post.
It’s over fifteen years later now and I know so much more about who I am and what I want. I spent quite a lot of time discovering my true feelings on all sorts of aspects of my life. When I met the man who would become my current husband, we got to know each other for months before we started dating, and then we dated for several months before he moved in (more for convenience than commitment this time). We were perfectly content to just be together, and while marriage was discussed, it was never a pressing matter. It was just before our four-year anniversary when he proposed. And when we planned our wedding it was on our terms, in a location we wanted with the look and feel we were looking for. It was perfect, and in a lot of ways I felt like I had finally grown into my own person.
Now, when I watch Father of the Bride, I just enjoy the movie for what it is — a movie. (I also laugh at my former self a bit.) And I think of how my views have changed so much from when this came out in 1991. Now I find myself firmly in Nina’s corner. Played by Diane Keaton, Nina Banks is the counterpoint to George’s frustrating and demoralizing attitude. She doesn’t want to hear his groaning or see him rolling his eyes. They are well-to-do enough (another thing I didn’t understand — not every wedding guest is going to send a $200 place setting as a gift. Actually, most don’t.) that they can afford this much extravagance and they do it because it’s important to their daughter. I no longer feel any sort of sympathy, George, for a man who dreads his daughter’s wedding day because he wants to keep her infantile and dependent on him for eternity; a father should be proud of his daughter as she grows into a woman, and he should acknowledge and encourage this transition rather than try to snuff it out.
I also think Annie and her betrothed, Bryan MacKenzie (George Newbern), are super adorable and have a great, easy chemistry. Hallmark thought this too, because they cast them as a married couple doing greeting card ads for years afterward. Their characters are both young and fresh-faced, still testing the waters of adulthood but forging ahead into this new territory, and the actors walk that line of conviction and anxiety quiet nicely.
Also, Steve Martin is completely charming, as always, even when his character is overbearing and wrongheaded, and I still get to think of him as an undeniably great dad. Even with all his blustering, he loves his daughter, and his wife, and his son Matty (played by baby Kieran Culkin). He adores his family and, when push comes to shove, he does absolutely everything he can for them. That’s a worthwhile fantasy dad if I ever saw one.
Now “drive safe, and don’t forget to fasten your condom.”
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