There Goes The Bride

Year releasted: 1980

by Noel Murray
July 27th, 2005

Plot: Tommy Smothers is having a busy day. To get ready for his daughter's afternoon wedding, he has to pick up his in-laws at the airport, go by the florist, and arrange for his whole family to get to the church—all while thinking up a new ad campaign for bra manufacturer Jim Backus, who expects to see a pitch before he leaves town that evening. Too bad Smothers picked this day to start hallucinating about a flirtatious '20s flapper played by Twiggy. While Smothers spends the afternoon talking to a phantom, his family and future family (including a red-faced Martin Balsam) grow increasingly hysterical. The wedding's florist, confiding in psychiatrist Phil Silvers, recounts the whole nutty day in flashback.

Key scenes: Attempting to fill in for his useless son-in-law, Smothers' wife's blustery British father (Geoffrey Sumner) gets on a golf cart and races from church to church barging in on the wrong weddings, wot? Meanwhile, Smothers imagines that he and Twiggy are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, which translates as Smothers tap-dancing madly while winking occasionally at the thin air on his right.

Can easily be distinguished by: The director's inability to give this stagey farce any snap. He gets no help from Smothers' gasping performance, and Smothers gets no help from the fact that his character is the only person in the theater who doesn't get the premise, which means he keeps publicly hugging and conversing with a Twiggy that no one can see. In excruciatingly long takes. For more than an hour.

Sign that it was made in 1980: Smothers gets through the day by popping pills and chasing them with booze.

Timeless message: To come up with a really memorable bra slogan, you have to be a little crazy.

Memorable quotes: Jim Backus gets the funniest lines, though probably only he could say "I have to give my secretary some before-lunch dictation" with the right dirty-old-man spin. Runner-up lines include Sumner warning "Things are getting violent in the vestry," and Smothers' wife's response when he says that Twiggy thinks he's like Genghis Kahn: "Won't she be surprised when she finds out your Genghis can't."

Available on DVD from St. Clair Vision.