Quite a few reviewers accuse this film of being dated. But when I first saw it in 1970, it already defied that idea because it saw through the zeitgeist. Rather than getting mired in passing fads and causes, the writers fondly made light of the clash of generations. Writers Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor exaggerate the tensions and conversations in the two families of the engaged couple, as well as the period fashions and furnishings, just enough to make the film entertaining, but also witty and touching.
The movie spares nobody. Hidebound Italian Catholics, bourgeois suburbanites, a macho ex-marine married to a feminist, an usher seducing a bridesmaid, counterculture cohabitation-- the superb cast delivers it all. Superficially, they all represent stereotypes, but-- and here's the trick-- they also defy simplistic categories they are unique individuals, and you cannot predict what any of them will say or do next. No Archie Bunkers or Meatheads here.
It's not Balzac, but it is a classic human comedy realized as popular art, two families afloat in the late '60s, when parents thought they were losing their offspring, because their kids were questioning traditions. But those kids were questioning ingrained habits, not traditional virtues, the deep values and ethics that form our larger society. "No gap here," is the refrain of Gig Young, a buffoonish patriarch determined to keep everybody happy-- but ultimately he's right. They all have more in common than they know, and by the time the young couple is married, we don't have to be told that their marriage will be every bit as complicated as their parents' are. The movie already told us.
If the movie has a core, it's Richard Castellano's speech to his elder son who is about to divorce his wife, an unthinkable first in the family. Castellano (in the same role he played in the original Broadway play) got an Oscar nomination, and he's wonderful throughout, but especially delivering the speech that becomes the spoken soul of the movie. It includes: "We're all strangers. But after a while you get used to it. You become deeper strangers. That's a sort of love."
The movie spares nobody. Hidebound Italian Catholics, bourgeois suburbanites, a macho ex-marine married to a feminist, an usher seducing a bridesmaid, counterculture cohabitation-- the superb cast delivers it all. Superficially, they all represent stereotypes, but-- and here's the trick-- they also defy simplistic categories they are unique individuals, and you cannot predict what any of them will say or do next. No Archie Bunkers or Meatheads here.
It's not Balzac, but it is a classic human comedy realized as popular art, two families afloat in the late '60s, when parents thought they were losing their offspring, because their kids were questioning traditions. But those kids were questioning ingrained habits, not traditional virtues, the deep values and ethics that form our larger society. "No gap here," is the refrain of Gig Young, a buffoonish patriarch determined to keep everybody happy-- but ultimately he's right. They all have more in common than they know, and by the time the young couple is married, we don't have to be told that their marriage will be every bit as complicated as their parents' are. The movie already told us.
If the movie has a core, it's Richard Castellano's speech to his elder son who is about to divorce his wife, an unthinkable first in the family. Castellano (in the same role he played in the original Broadway play) got an Oscar nomination, and he's wonderful throughout, but especially delivering the speech that becomes the spoken soul of the movie. It includes: "We're all strangers. But after a while you get used to it. You become deeper strangers. That's a sort of love."