Theme Song: Nothing remarkable. Standard American wedding songs.
Interesting Dated References: Alan Alda could do no wrong in the 80s, despite helming a series of Woody Allen-derivative films he wrote, directed, and starred in to diminishing returns. Betsy’s Wedding is the last and worst of those efforts.
Social Context: It’s kind of like a Father of the Bride remake that loses the plot in other, more trivial side plots. Incidentally, this film came out a year before the better-liked Father of the Bride remake with Steve Martin.
Summary: Eddie Hopper (Alda) is a home builder in the middle of a business slump when his daughter Betsy (Molly Ringwald) announces her plans to marry wealthy fiance Jake (Dylan Walsh).
Underneath endless character introductions, there’s a modest swing at a focused plot as Eddie and Jake’s wealthy parents have a pissing contest over bank-rolling the ever-ballooning wedding budget.
Eddie secures financing through the mafia and cuts corners, which, along with a torrential rainfall, results in a disastrous wedding ceremony and reluctantly sweet ending.
But instead of that quaint story, we get multiple meandering subplots involving Eddie’s full mafia-indoctrination via his cousin Oscar (Joe Pesci) and uncle Georgie (Burt Young). This story easily eats up 30 minutes of time as Georgie uses Eddie’s construction business to launder money.
What about the plot involving Oscar’s affair with his secretary, which gobbles up another 45 minutes of runtime? Do you care that Oscar’s wife is played by an under-utilized Catherine O’Hara, giving this movie a great Home Alone connection together with her and Pesci? Neither do I!
Then there’s Ally Sheedy as Connie, Eddie’s other daughter, who is slowly wooed by Italian stereotype Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia). It all goes on and on forever, and even the good comedic moments are drowned in endless narrative. Where was the editor, and did they ever think of telling Alda, “No!?”
Worth Mentioning:
– Anthony LaPaglia throws himself into his role, and though he’s spouting rote Italian mobster idioms the entire time, he is endearingly sweet, including during a great scene where he and Alda have lunch on a construction site. It’s a standout role for him. Almost as good as his role in Nitram.
– 1990 saw Pesci star in Betsy’s Wedding, Goodfellas, and Home Alone.
– Alan Alda would not direct another film.
Poster and Box Art: This style of late 80s/early 90s poster is a very undocumented genre of movie art.
It involves taking primary cast members, showing them full-body, posing them in a row with certain plot elements, and then making them all react.