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Betsy's Wedding
Alan Alda served as director, screenwriter, and star of Betsy's Wedding, an effervescent 1990 comedy that suffers a little due to an overly complex screenplay, but the story problems are offset by a superb ensemble cast, all working at the top of their game.
Alda's updating of the old Spencer Tracy classic Father of the Bride finds him playing Eddie Hopper, a contractor who is thrilled to learn that his younger daughter, Betsy (Molly Ringwald) is engaged, but really can't afford to give her the lavish wedding that he wants and she doesn't. Not wanting to be out done by the groom's wealthy parents who have offered to pay for everything, Eddie turns to his greasy brother-in-law, Oscar (Joe Pesci) who gets Eddie hooked up with a mob boss (Burt Young) and his mob prince (Anthony LaPaglia), who finds himself falling for Eddie's older daughter, Connie (Ally Sheedy), a romantically-challenged cop.
Alda's intentions are on the money here, but the basic story branches out in so many directions that the viewer almost needs a scorecard to keep track of everything that's going on here. The competition with the future in-laws and how all the wedding planning is tearing the couple apart were expected parts of the story, but did we really care about scummy Oscar cheating on his wife (Catherine O'Hara, in a glorious cameo) and her cheating him out of his money? Did we really need Eddie getting advice from the ghost of his dead father (Joey Bishop, in his final film role), or Eddie's nightmares involving encounters with wild animals that always conclude with him wrestling with his wife (Madeline Kahn), mistaking her for the animal? It also seemed that Alda's take on mobster and mob life smacked of cliche...the dialogue was overly affected and the chase that ensued when someone tries to take out Burt Young's character was the film's weakest scene.
What works here is this incredible cast that Alda has assembled to tell his story. It was a refreshing change watching Madeline Kahn playing it relatively straight for a change without getting lost in the shuffle. Nicholas Coster and the late Bibi Besch were a lot of fun as the groom's parents and it was a lot of fun seeing Ringwald and Sheedy playing sisters, five years after The Breakfast Club. Anthony LaPaglia is a total charmer in his De Niro-esque turn as the mob prince and Joe Pesci steals every scene he's in as the obnoxious Oscar.
Another thing that I did like about the screenplay for this film that I have found to be a problem with a lot of Alda's work is that he has actually given the characters their own brains and thoughts and voices. In most of Alan Alda's films, all of the characters talk exactly like Alan Alda, but that wasn't the case here. These characters were their own people and Alda never allows his character or his direction to get in the way of that, which sets this film apart from most of his film work as a writer and director and made this cinematic journey a lot of fun. And you gotta love Betsy's wedding dress.
Alan Alda served as director, screenwriter, and star of Betsy's Wedding, an effervescent 1990 comedy that suffers a little due to an overly complex screenplay, but the story problems are offset by a superb ensemble cast, all working at the top of their game.
Alda's updating of the old Spencer Tracy classic Father of the Bride finds him playing Eddie Hopper, a contractor who is thrilled to learn that his younger daughter, Betsy (Molly Ringwald) is engaged, but really can't afford to give her the lavish wedding that he wants and she doesn't. Not wanting to be out done by the groom's wealthy parents who have offered to pay for everything, Eddie turns to his greasy brother-in-law, Oscar (Joe Pesci) who gets Eddie hooked up with a mob boss (Burt Young) and his mob prince (Anthony LaPaglia), who finds himself falling for Eddie's older daughter, Connie (Ally Sheedy), a romantically-challenged cop.
Alda's intentions are on the money here, but the basic story branches out in so many directions that the viewer almost needs a scorecard to keep track of everything that's going on here. The competition with the future in-laws and how all the wedding planning is tearing the couple apart were expected parts of the story, but did we really care about scummy Oscar cheating on his wife (Catherine O'Hara, in a glorious cameo) and her cheating him out of his money? Did we really need Eddie getting advice from the ghost of his dead father (Joey Bishop, in his final film role), or Eddie's nightmares involving encounters with wild animals that always conclude with him wrestling with his wife (Madeline Kahn), mistaking her for the animal? It also seemed that Alda's take on mobster and mob life smacked of cliche...the dialogue was overly affected and the chase that ensued when someone tries to take out Burt Young's character was the film's weakest scene.
What works here is this incredible cast that Alda has assembled to tell his story. It was a refreshing change watching Madeline Kahn playing it relatively straight for a change without getting lost in the shuffle. Nicholas Coster and the late Bibi Besch were a lot of fun as the groom's parents and it was a lot of fun seeing Ringwald and Sheedy playing sisters, five years after The Breakfast Club. Anthony LaPaglia is a total charmer in his De Niro-esque turn as the mob prince and Joe Pesci steals every scene he's in as the obnoxious Oscar.
Another thing that I did like about the screenplay for this film that I have found to be a problem with a lot of Alda's work is that he has actually given the characters their own brains and thoughts and voices. In most of Alan Alda's films, all of the characters talk exactly like Alan Alda, but that wasn't the case here. These characters were their own people and Alda never allows his character or his direction to get in the way of that, which sets this film apart from most of his film work as a writer and director and made this cinematic journey a lot of fun. And you gotta love Betsy's wedding dress.