Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 23, 1990 TAG: 9006230142
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He wrote, directed and starred in this too-talky comic melodrama loosely based on his own daughter's wedding. The story has a predictable structure. It begins with Betsy (Molly Ringwald) announcing her engagement to Jake (Dylan Walsh), a wealthy young investment banker and nonentity. It ends with the wedding day itself. In between, the plot is needlessly complicated.
Initially, her father Eddie (Alda), a building contractor, and Jake's father (Nicolas Coster) try to outdo each other in planning a sumptuous celebration. When Eddie finds himself a bit strapped for cash, he goes to his shady brother-in-law, Oscar (Joe Pesci), for a loan. He then finds himself in business with a gangster named Georgie (Burt Young). Georgie's nephew Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia) promptly falls for Eddie's other daughter, Connie (Ally Sheedy), but since Connie is a policewoman, their romance gets off to a rocky start.
Alda, the director, let Alda, the actor, get away with whatever he wanted to do, and that's a big mistake. He's at his most ingratiating and insufferable. The story gets interesting whenever he's off camera, and that's not nearly often enough. Pesci is almost as good here as he was in "Lethal Weapon 2," but the real surprise is Anthony LaPaglia. As a courtly mafioso hopelessly in love, he steals the film.
In 1978, Robert Altman took virtually the same material and turned it into an overlooked masterpiece, "A Wedding." Nothing in "Betsy's Wedding" even comes close to it. The attempts at humor are particularly lame, the insights are shallow and the mawkish, sentimental conclusion is, at best, an embarrassment.i
`Betsy's Wedding' A Touchstone release playing at the Valley View Mall 6 (362-8219) and the Salem Valley 8 (389-0444). Rated R for profanity. An hour and 31 minutes long.
by CNB