In this darkly comic portrait of family life illuminated only by the open icebox, Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine are a married couple, ill met by fridge light. Daughter Debbie Reynolds (a sure and clever performance) announces her intention to wed her beau in a no-frills quickie, and then must duck as twenty-five years worth of disappointment comes spilling out from her luckless parents. In this Bronx Irish household, everyone is ashamed of everyone else, and so it is not long before Debbie is trying on wedding gowns and Dad, a taxi driver, is threatened with financial ruin. But wait...Father of the Bride this is not. When Borgnine passes through the deep shadows of their railroad-style apartment he is passing into a new world of emotions. The climactic confrontation with Davis is a visual stunner: one pictures John Alton hovering in the wings of this bedroom done in Middle-American chiaroscuro. Only the bed, the source of their emptiness, is lit brightly. But that is a start.