Courtney Howard // Film Critic
It took 41 years to see the very first FATHER OF THE BRIDE remade as a comedy vehicle for its star and now it’s only taken 31 years to see the story overhauled once again. This latest iteration retains the heart, humor and spirit of its predecessors, delivering a revamped story centered not only on the titular dad (Andy Garcia), but also on the women in his life: his long-suffering wife Ingrid (Gloria Estefan) and their daughters Sofia (Adria Arjona) and Cora (Isabela Merced).
Steering things in the right direction is screenwriter Matt Lopez, who’s re-adapted films before like RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN and THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE. He’s infused this remake with cultural specificity and a universality to its emotional pull, leading to many ingenious, meaningful and contemporary updates.
I’m a fan of the 1991 remake and, in all honesty, I was very curious how you were going to pull this off. And you absolutely did. I loved it. What were some of the challenges updating this material and yet remaining true to the enduring spirit of this angsty father?
“I, like you, was a fan of the Steve Martin movie and I also love the Spencer Tracy movie MGM did in the ‘50s. From the earliest stages of this, we – and I include Warner Brothers and the filmmakers – were all of the mind that, if we were going to do this, this movie needs its own reason to exist, separate and apart from being the ‘Latino Version.’ It can’t just be about diverse casting. Just as the Steve Martin version was the FATHER OF THE BRIDE of its time, what can we say that brings something new to the table?
One of the things is holding up the very idea of the father of the bride up to some gentle and good-humored scrutiny of the idea of giving your daughter away. It’s ingrained in many cultures that it tends to be the Father of the Bride who walks his ‘little girl’ down the aisle. So really examining that, through the Sofia character, having a really strong female character. Same with the Mother of the Bride. Diane Keaton in the Disney version and Joan Bennett in the MGM version were both wonderful, but those movies werem’t concerned with exploring the relationship of the parents of the bride.
I had this idea of, what if we open the movie and find out that 30 years after saying ‘Til death do us part,’ we meet the parents of the bride on the couch of their marriage counselor, who’s basically like, ‘It’s time to call it quits.’ That allowed us a couple of things; One, to add the element of farce into the movie because Andy’s character and Gloria’s character have to pretend to still be in love for at least a month so they can walk their little girl down the aisle and then they can get divorced and move onto their happier lives.
From the heartwarming, dramatic angle, the movie asks the question, ‘Can these two people, who have lost contact with how they felt when they walked down the aisle 30 years earlier, can they, in the course of helping their daughter put together her wedding, rediscover some of that magic?’ In a way that the previous movies are not, I think there’s a love story here for the parents of the bride.”
The film’s central female characters – Ingrid, Sofia and Cora – are given richer internal lives and conflicts than previous iterations, thus making them far more progressive-leaning, but also far more impactful on the parents’ journey. The juxtaposition was remarkable.
“They say write what you know. I have two daughters and a wife, who are very independent and I’m extremely proud. I tend to be pretty progressive when it comes to this stuff too. Although, look, I’ll say I grew up in that Cuban-American culture. Some of that stuff is little ingrained. I’m nowhere on the scale of Andy’s character in the film – and, by the way, neither is Andy. But the idea of… you hit the nail on the head. The movie is called FATHER OF THE BRIDE and needs to be called FATHER OF THE BRIDE, but from the very early stages, I was interested in the Mother of the Bride and the Daughter/ The Bride.
In the previous versions, the Daughter/ the Bride, her scenes are mainly concerned with what is the china gonna look like and where are we going on our honeymoon. That didn’t feel like the women in my life. And that was yet another example of how we could tell a new version of this story that honors the previous versions and I think the movie totally delivers the goods. It was always, ‘We gotta have a wedding planner.’ There’s a great little nod in the movie – and there’s a bunch to the previous films – where there’s a scene where they try to get into the tuxes that they got married in and they don’t fit at all.
I told [director] Gary Alazraki, ‘Let’s see Ingrid get in her dress.’ And, of course, Gloria Estefan, who is this amazing, fearless actor was like, ‘I’ll do it!’ Without taking away the centrality of the Father of the Bride’s story, I was really interested in bringing these additional elements to it.”
There are many poignant moments, but the one that got me was the pin with the pearl from Ingrid’s dress. I wept. Was there any difficulty in figuring out the construction of these moments or did those appear naturally?
“I can’t say it always comes natural. But on FATHER OF THE BRIDE, it did. I wrote that script very fast. I’ve never written a script as fast – in a manner of 3 weeks, the first draft. And they greenlit the first draft, another first that usually does not happen. I plugged into something inside me. I’m sure part of it is informed by I’m from this culture. These voices are… I don’t have to conjure them. They are just floating around in my head.
It’s partly where I am in this stage. My daughters are not of marrying age, but my older daughter is getting ready to go to college and I think as I was writing it, I just could tap into a man, who feels the Earth shifting under his feet, who feels change coming and wants to embrace it and yet it can be very, very hard to let go. To some extent, all the versions of FATHER OF THE BRIDE are about letting go.
The trickier thing was balancing the tones. Balancing the, ‘Okay. We just laughed and now we’re going to pull on people’s heartstrings.’ It was great seeing it with an audience at LALIFF (The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival) and having people I’d never met before – and not just Latinos too – people who were like, ‘Oh my god, I cried three times in that movie.’”
This obviously isn’t your first rodeo adapting existing work. What attracts you to doing adaptations and what are some of the fundamentals you look for in each project to do?
“That’s a great question. I’m fascinated by remakes and re-imaginings. And, you’re right. There is a spectrum. On one extreme, Gus Van Sant made PSYCHO almost shot-for-shot. Then you have other examples at the other pole, that just take a title and run with it. I’m kind of interested in landing somewhere in the middle where you honor the DNA and honor what makes people love a certain movie or title, but at the same time, I’m not interested in just slavish adaptations. I feel like every movie needs its own reason to exist and had we not come up with one for FATHER OF THE BRIDE, Warner Brothers wouldn’t have made the movie.”
So both the 1950 and 1991 versions spurred sequels. Do you have ideas for a sequel if one were to happen and would it be also like those before it where it’s centered on a pregnancy?
“It does seem like the natural place to go, right? I think so. I would also be interested in telling the story there of Cora, the little sister, who is a Queer character. It’s kind of established, but not super explored. I have this idea in my head for FATHER OF THE BRIDES and that’s kind of the next phase that would be a movie where Cora’s getting married and at the same time Sofia is pregnant.”
What are some remakes or reboots that have inspired you?
“That is a really good question. From a completely different style of cinema, I thought that the remake of CASINO ROYALE was really good. And similar in the sense that they brought something new and exciting about it. What Marvel has done with SPIDER-MAN, I think is really cool. There’s not a lot of great ones.
I think it’s so easy to get cynical about remakes, but at the same time, you have to remember too, like people are like, ‘Ugh Hollywood has run out of ideas.’ I read something recently that the 1939 THE WIZARD OF OZ, which is one of my favorite movies, was like the 3rd WIZARD OF OZ. There are WIZARD OF OZ’s that go back to the silent era. There’s nothing new. Great stories are great stories and Hollywood is always going to retell them. So, on that basis alone, I’ll say the 1939 THE WIZARD OF OZ is one of my favorite remakes.”
FATHER OF THE BRIDE begins airing exclusively on HBOMax on June 16.
