YMMV / Father of the Bride (1991)

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Part II, Steve Martin's character bemoans the idea of becoming a father again at his age. Steve Martin himself became a father for the first time at 67.
  • In Part II, George (Steve Martin) tells Frank (Martin Short) that he cannot sleep so Frank gives him sleeping pills. The pills knock George out and Frank has to carry a lethargic George to the family's car. A similar situation occurs in an episode of Only Murders in the Building where Short's character has to cart Martin's character around after the latter is incapacitated by poison.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In Part I, George takes Bryan out for drinks when Annie initially cancels the wedding. He finds himself warming up to his future son-in-law and realizes how similar he and Annie are to Bryan and Nina. He also fesses up to Annie over the claims of him breaking his parents’ bathroom mirror and ruining Mr. MacKenzie’s bank book.
  • In Part II, while initially cynical towards the female obstetrician, Dr. Megan Eisenberg, who had to fill in because their own was unavailable at the time, George eventually warms up and is grateful towards her for helping deliver the baby perfectly healthy, so much so that he and Nina name their newborn daughter after her.
• Parody Displacement: People who were kids in the nineties are probably more familiar with the "Hot dogs, hot dog buns" gag from an episode of Animaniacs than the first film.
• Strawman Has a Point: We're supposed to see George as a hopelessly unromantic stick-in-the-mud, and a bad father, for his (entirely reasonable and understandable) concern over the skyrocketing wedding costs. It's also linked to his inability to see his daughter as anything more than his little girl; The opening speech lampshades this explicitly, but doesn't depict him as unreasonable or unfair in this perception, as he grows out of it. We're also meant to dismiss his concern about his daughter announcing that she's become engaged to a guy she's just met, and that George and Nina haven't even met yet and didn't even know existed, but it seems a lot more grounded in reality than Nina's reaction of "Awwwwwwwww so romantic heart eyes heart eyes heart eyes!!!!!"
• Values Resonance: After the crash of 2008, most people find themselves quite sympathetic to George's concern over wedding costs. In fact, the idea of having a wedding reception in a backyard grilling burgers seems quite reasonable.

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