Overrated

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Each sequel is a risky adventure. in this case, it is just a great idea. because it is a charming slice from a lovely period. because the rhytm and the humor and the performances are admirable. and the script remains seductive at whole. it is more than a comedy but...a chronicle. about perspective about a young couple, about birth and about child, about parents and about future. many well known by parents and young couples. and that does it a beautiful eulogy to family institution. so, chronicle of a couple first steps in marriage.

The dysfunction of flustered Spencer Tracy continues as he faces becoming a grandfather the year after being the father of the bride. He objects to an immediate baby shower and wife Joan Bennett's desire for the couple to move in. Bennett fantasizes about re-decorating Taylor's old room into a nursery as if she was Myrna Loy's Mrs. Blandings describing blue to decorators for her dreamhouse. Daughter Elizabeth Taylor is the only one considerate toward's Tracy's feelings, exploding at everybody else when they try to take over again. His kitten more precious to him than ever, Tracy gives her the wisdom she is craving. This makes their scenes together even more poignant and indicates why a sequel was a very good idea.While the two films pay closer attention to Tracy, the lovely Liz gets more attention here over wife Joan Bennett who was the dominant female in the first. Ms. Taylor had a few good outbursts, her character truly becomes revealed as a genuinely lovely young lady inside and out. The screenplay lightly explores how emotional a pregnancy can be, intertwining that with marital issues that come out of those pregnancy hormones. Bennett is more of a light-hearted nag here, well-meaning but a bit bossy and continuously throwing the baby in the reluctant grandfather's face. At that rate, Tracy will never bond with the infant unless fate steps in. That is where this rises above becoming a '50s version of the Andy Hardy series, showing genuinely real people rather than Louis B. Mayer's idealistic view of what he thought a real American family should be.

At first, I was hoping "Father's Little Dividend" was going to be about Joan Bennett's character becoming pregnant; then, Spencer Tracy dealing with a new baby of his own! In the beginning of the film, Mr. Tracy shows some very amorous interest/contact with Ms. Bennett; and, she certainly looks young enough to be pregnant. I guess Tracy and Bennett were being "careful"; because, all too predictably, Elizabeth Taylor becomes the expectant.I see the "middle class" Banks' still employ their maid "Delilah"; despite their worries about money, they didn't have to "let her go" after the wedding bills rang... This is a pleasant enough sequel, but having "the stork" visit Bennett & Tracy, instead of Taylor & Taylor, might have made "Father's Little Dividend" (1951) even better than the original "Father of the Bride" (1950). ****** Father's Little Dividend (1951) Vincente Minnelli ~ Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor

This is a horrid little thing. It is ugly, like the baby that was incomprehensibly chosen to stand for cute.Here are the problems.First, it is uncinematic. It isn't a movie at all, just a bunch of skits strung together under the umbrella of a father who is grumpy and then becomes fondly engaged.It has Spencer Tracy, a bad actor in any context, here recalling his Jekyll and Hyde faces. It has Liz trying her best to find a person in the cartoonish script. And the good witch of Oz as the shrewish mother in law?And it has one of the clumsiest plot fulcrums I know. The granddad takes the baby for a walk, gets engaged in a soccer game and forgets the baby, who is gone on his return. We then see a frantic comic search, ending in the police office. It isn't funny. None of this is, and watching it will damage your cinematic psyche. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.