Anyone who has ever been involved in wedding preparations, an event which in reality is not quite the soft-focused idyll Bride magazine cracks it up to be, will appreciate Father of the Bride. “...From the first image to the last, the film is an anthology of the absurdities which accompany a middle-class wedding.... And the absurdities are shown from the viewpoint of the only person in a household who knows their exact cost in dollars and cents - the bride's father. Tracking along the length of a table strewn with the debris of the wedding feast, the camera pauses on the solitary figure of Spencer Tracy, slumped in a chair, as he begins to tell, in his inimitable wry tones, how it all happened....
“Vincente Minnelli...direct(s) his cast to play with a minimum of emphasis and a maximum of naturalism - a sort of casualness which make(s) Elizabeth Taylor and Don Taylor one of the most convincing ‘modern' young couples ever to appear on screen.... But it is Tracy's beautifully controlled performance and the minutiae which grace the action that give Father of the Bride its rare quality....” --Catherine de la Roche, “Vincente Minnelli”