Father of the Bride (2022)

Father of the Bride (2022)

 3/10

 

Starring

Andy Garcia

Gloria Estefan

Adria Arjona

Isabela Merced

 

Directed by Gaz Alazraki

 

If you think you'll be welcomed into a scene after the wedding, where the father of the bride narrates how we got to that point, forget it. This film does not have the father of the bride as the narrator like the previous ones. The film itself is very forgettable and leaves no mark.

Father of the Bride: The Latin Remix has its heart in the right place, but the execution is sad and boring. Except for the ending, when everything falls apart, and they have to have the wedding at a new venue, everything before then is just a drag. The story is pathetic, unrealistic, and the film felt like a bad joke. I can understand the challenge of trying to make lightning strike thrice. The first Father of the Bride duo movies in the 50s were great. The 90s duo remakes were even more superb, so trying to create a woke rendition for this new generation is a trying task they took on and failed, in my view.

Removing all the classic magic that came from the money talk as the Father of the Bride tried to be cheap killed the comedy for me. This new version of an overly wealthy man who saw money as no problem but was hell-bent on tradition was more annoying than funny.

The film also took away the traditional marital settings from both previous remakes and just left everything else that people of this new world we live in will love.

I think anyone who says this film is anywhere near as good as the previous two remakes is a big liar and should never be trusted.

I felt the film wasted such a great opportunity to redo the story from a Latin point of view. This whole war on wealth and using tired Latin tropes made the film more tiresome than it should have been.

The plot is about the Herrera family, whose daughter Sofi comes home to drop the surprise that she wants to get married in a month’s time to her man, Adan. Billy, her father (Andy Garcia), and Ingrid, her mother (Gloria Estefan), were shocked to the core, but Ingrid rolled with it, and Billy was not happy to be losing his daughter so quickly. From there, the film shifted from Billy losing his daughter to Billy and Adan’s father, Hernan, trying to take over the wedding.

The couple wanted a small wedding, while both fathers wanted a big one—except one wanted one bigger than the other.

The film is about this coming wedding and how Billy is trying to take charge of it, as his own marriage falls apart. We also see how much focus he has on Sofi, who went to college, and how he does not respect his other daughter, Cora, for not wanting to go to college.

In the end, the film is just meh and not worth my time. It’s one thing to see while waiting for something better. I felt its existence was insulting to the memory of Father of the Bride from the 90s.