THE FILM:
Steve Martin stars in this enjoyable 1991 remake of the 1950 classic film about the problems that a father goes through planning his daughter's wedding. Kimberly Williams stars as Martin's daughter, who comes home from a trip to Rome to reveal that she's met the man she wants to marry.

What follows are a series of events leading up to the wedding. They're fairly predictable, but the direction of Charles Shyer keeps the action fairly fast and entertaining. It's the performances as well, especially by Steve Martin, that rise this remake above the level of the usual comedy fare. The real standout performance though, is by Martin Short as a party planner. Finding a rather interesting accent for the character, Short is extremely funny in each and every scene he's in.

A few of the jokes fall flat, but overall, I enjoyed much of the dialogue that the film has to offer. The most enjoyable moments of the movie are the nicely done moments of drama during the film, which don't feel forced or sappy. It's a sweet and enjoyable film that nicely blends humor and drama for an overall enjoyable time.


THE DVD:
VIDEO QUALITY: Again, Disney uses the same master as they likely did for the laserdisc version to make this DVD. The colors are enjoyably vibrant and lively for the most part, but that doesn't mean that I thought that the overall presentation on this DVD was flawless. There were quite a few instances where artifacts made themselves known, especially a few scenes where shimmering became slightly annoying. Suprisingly, I noticed a few places where there seemed to be a scratch or two on the original print that was used for this disc.

It certainly isn't awful or unwatchable, though. Aside from the occasional artifacts, I enjoyed the picture quality for the most part on this DVD. Images are slightly soft and I definitely would have liked to see them sharper, but images are generally at least pleasantly clear. Contrast and color saturation are generally slightly above average and the shadow detail is even fairly nice at times. John Lindley("Pleasantville", "You've Got Mail") was the cinematographer on this film and the disc preserves his work here nicely.

But is it as good as it could be, or should be? Not really. For a movie like this that was a fairly big hit at the box office(it made 89.325 million at the box office during its run at theaters), I would think it would deserve a new, anamorphic transfer. Warner Brothers and New Line give anamorphic transfers to practically everything, even their films that fail at the box office. You would think that Disney would do some nice work with a box office hit like this. As it is, "Father Of The Bride" is a passable disc in terms of image quality, but with the capability of this technology and the price that we certainly have to pay for these discs lacking any features from Disney, why should we accept passable? Disney does really nice work on their current hits, but "Father Of The Bride" is part of a group of discs that I sat down to watch that included other older Disney/Miramax films such as Four Rooms and Beautiful Girls, and I was definitely not impressed with those either. Even Paramount seems to start to be learning about what they can do with the format: their transfer of the 1978 classic film Days Of Heaven recently looked stunning. It's unfortunate that Disney isn't trying to do excellent work with any of their older titles. I'm not trying to compare the films themselves, but if Paramount can make a 20 year old film look stunning, then I believe that Disney could make all of their recent catalog titles, most of which aren't more than 8 years old, look excellent as well.

SOUND: "Father Of The Bride" is all dialogue and sparkly, romantic music. Nothing terribly impressive about the sound mix itself, but the music from the Alan Silvestri score certainly sounds clear and enjoyable. The dialogue is presented nicely as well, sounding clear and natural.

MENUS: Horrid looking basic menus with various pictures from the movie on a red/white background.

EXTRAS:The trailer.

GRADES:
The Film: 83/B = (415/500 possible points)
Video: 81/B = (324/400 possible points)
Audio: 80/B = (320/400 possible points)
Extras: 65/D = (195/300 possible points)
Menus: 60/D- = (120/200 possible points)
Value: 67/D = (201/300 possible points)
Presentation:71.5/C = (71.5/100 possible points)

TOTAL POINTS:1646.5/2200
Overall Percentage:74.84%/D

Final Thoughts: Again, another Disney title that certainly doesn't give the customer too much in the way of material for the money. The image and sound quality is passable, but not the kind of quality you'd expect for $29.99.