Amazon.com video review:
This '90s update of the Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth
Taylor hit is a mix of the pleasant and the silly, a nice enough
movie but a little too controlled to become particularly
interesting. Steve Martin plays the aging patriarch who is threatened
by his daughter's engagement and not-quite-willing to let her go. The
writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers provides
Martin's character with a perhaps too-broad range of comic
responsiveness to the situation, some of it gentle (a ritual game of
basketball between dad and his little girl) and some of it slapstick
(Martin sneaking around his prospective in-laws' house and
encountering a guard dog). Martin Short turns up as a wedding
coordinator--which has deliriously delicious possibilities--but his
inventiveness doesn't quite strike the chord this time. --Tom
Keogh
