You know the film. It’s a film you have never heard of. The cast might be composed of actors you know and love or complete unknowns. A documentary that sounds interesting about a topic you might like. You stumble across it on streaming and wonder if it will be worth two hours of your time. This series will be devoted to reviewing films like these, the strange items that pop up when you are looking for a flick on the streaming service of your choice. This is “We Found It On Streaming”
FILM: Father of the Bride
Release Date: June 16, 2022
Run Time: 117 Minutes.
Streaming Service(s): Max
Rating: Rated PG-13 for brief suggestive material
Billy Herrera (Andy Garcia) has been thrown for a loop. His wife, Ingrid (Gloria Estefan) has told him that she is done with him putting his work first and wants a divorce. They plan to tell their two children Sofia (Adria Arjona) and Cora (Isabela Merced), when they gather for Sofia’s welcome home dinner.
But before Billy and Ingrid can drop the divorce bombshell on their children, Sofia has a bombshell of her own. She has met a man named Adan (Diego Bonetta) and she is going to get married. The news of the divorce now takes a back seat to the planning of Sofia’s wedding, which turns into a battle between Billy’s more traditional values and Sofia’s desire for a smaller more esoteric and intimate ceremony.
As if you couldn’t tell, this Father of the Bride isn’t your father’s Father of the Bride (You know, the one from 1991 with Steve Martin and Martin Short). Nor is it your grandfather’s Father of the Bride (That would be the one from 1950 that starred Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor). Instead, it is a film that goes in an uncharted direction, so much so that it is almost a remake in name only.
Don’t get me wrong, you still get Billy getting sad of losing his daughter and plenty of his reacting to the price of the various parts of the wedding. But this Father of the Bride is more about tradition fighting a losing battle against a wave of modernity. Billy is a Cuban immigrant who is stuck in a past where a man worked to support his family and heard no complaints about it, marriages take place in a Catholic Church, the father has ultimate say in the wedding since he is footing the bill, and couples never get divorced. His worldview is constantly under attack from all angles during the course of the film, and Billy must decide whether to dig in and stay true to his beliefs or change with the times.
This is not an easy role to play. Go too far in one direction, and the character becomes an unbearable idiot. Go too far in another and the character becomes silly. You need an actor that is able to strike a balance where he is both pigheaded and lovable. Luckily, this film has Andy Garcia.
It doesn’t seem fair to call Andy Garcia an underrated actor. After all, he has an Oscar nomination to his credit. But he is seldom mentioned when people list the best actors of his generation. They should be because he is a great actor. And he puts on a bravura performance here.
Garcia’s Billy is a man trapped by the way he was raised, tortured that he is being pulled apart from his family because of it. Most of Billy’s turmoil plays out over Garcia’s face. When he looks lovingly at Ingrid, you can also see a twinge of regret that he is going to lose her forever because he could not be the husband he needed. And that is just one example of what Garcia brings to the role. Garcia is the actor that holds the whole film together, and he is fantastic.
Not faring as well is Estefan. She is an actress of limited experience. She doesn’t have a lot of roles to her credit, and her inexperience shows. Her character of Ingrid comes off as mean and shrewish the way Estefan plays her. You get the impression that Ingrid’s instances of animosity towards Billy in the film is a ploy by the character to get the man she loves to wake up and treat her right. But Estefan cannot consistently provide this nuance to the character. So, she comes off as a harridan.
The rest of the cast performs well. Arjona and Merced do well playing Billy and Ingrid’s daughters. Yes, that might be hard to believe considering that both actresses acted in Sony’s horrible Spiderverse franchise (Arjona in Morbius, Merced in Madame Web) but they are very good here. So is Boneta, whose more sensitive Adan is quite the contrast to Garcia’s taciturn Billy. But he plays the role in such a way that when the two find common ground, it seems believable and works well.
Fans of the 1991 movie might be wondering if there is a wedding planner character. There is, she is called Natalie and she is played by Chloe Fineman. But if you are expecting a scene-stealing performance like the one Martin Short’s Franck had in that earlier film, you are going to be disappointed. Fineman’s Natalie is Franck with the volume turned down to 2. She is quirky and weird, but you get the impression that the filmmakers didn’t want the character overshadowing the narrative the way Franck did the 1991 film. This is a good choice.
Father of the Bride might not appeal to all the fans of the originals, but it deserves credit for going in a fresh direction. It is worth a look alone just for Andy Garcia’s performance alone. You could do worse than spend two hours with the Herreras
Have you found a film on streaming that you’d like us to look at? Leave it in the comments and it might appear in a future installment of this feature.
