First: Happy Mother’s Day to all maternal figures and lots of love for anyone to whom today is a hard one. ❤️
It has been said before but I’ll say it again: All happy families have the same bleached white perfect smiles, but every bat-shit crazy family is bat-shit crazy in their own dysfunctional way. In this movie, this clan is definitely the latter.
And yes, this the second movie I’ve covered starring a Golden Girl, thanks for noticing.
Children of the Bride (1990)
Provided description: Middle-aged Margret Becker becomes engaged to a man who’s only two years older than her oldest child. She must learn to deal with the doubts faced by each of her four children concerning her fiance, whose collective discomfort, and individual perceptions of the circumstances, seem entirely impenetrable.
Where to watch: Stream for free on Tubi, Pluto, or IMDbTV.
The movie opens on a bunch of kids in matching camp shirts feeding groups of mama animals and their babies at a zoo. A lovey-dovey May-December couple named John (Patrick Duffy, known at the time for Dallas but from my 90s childhood for Step By Step) and Margret (Rue McClanahan from Golden Girls, duh) stop in front of the llamas and start making out. The camp kids make some quips, including “When are you getting married?,” so John shrugs and says, “It’s as good a time as any.” He pulls out a ring and Margret demurs at first. “What will people say?” she asks, but of course, ultimately, she accepts.
The camp counselor gets the campers to perform an annoying cheer in celebration and
as soon as the crowd of kids are gone, Margret quips, “Glad my kids are grown.” You can’t have Rue McClanahan without an arsenal of one-liners, it’s the rule.
Margret tells John that she’s worried how her grown children will react to the news. John reminds her that it’s going to be fine, they’re all adults here, which pretty much guarantees that everything is not going to be fine.
The four adult kids in question: Dennis, the oldest, a typical 80s yuppie scumbag, is already divorced multiple times. Mary, also known as Sister Mary, is an actual nun, habit and all, but she’s got a ~secret~. Andy is the blue collar second son who never married the mother of his two daughters. Anne, in leopard print with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, is the female version of Dennis, which in the 80s means she’s a twice-divorced smart talker.
As you may expect, Dennis does not take well to his future stepfather and it turns out that John is only 39 to Dennis’s 37. He asks John, ”And when you’re 56 and Mom’s 70 and all your friends are trolling after girls Anne’s age, what then?,” a real doozy of a question that says a whoooole lot about Dennis. It also made me pull out my calculator (well, the calculator app on my phone).
If John is 39, and when he’s 56, Margret will be 70, then that means she’s currently 53, and if Dennis is currently 37, that means she had him at 16, but if Anne’s 24, then Margret gave birth to her at age 29. All of this to say, good grief, let your mother be happy!
It’s around here that things turn into a Tennessee Williams play. Anne drops in on her soon-to-be-ex-husband while he’s there with his girlfriend and leaves with a red hand mark on her face. Her drinking problem becomes more and more apparent with every one-liner. Andy finally pulls up in his jalopy at 3 am and Anne refuses to even look him in the eye. Apparently, no one has seen him in ten years after he dropped out of Harvard and moved to Florida to paint boats. Andy picks up Mary from the Greyhound station and takes her out for late-night burgers, where she tells him she’s leaving the convent but not to tell Mom. Yikes!
The next morning, Margret is thrilled to have all four of her children under one roof again, so do they have a nice breakfast together? Absolutely not. They all fight except Mary, who eats off everyone’s plates after puking at 6 am.
How each of the four spend their day:
Dennis storms out of the house where he runs into the neighbor’s hot wife and well, you know what guys like that do.
The sisters try on bridesmaid dresses and Mary spills her secret: she’s pregnant (who could have seen it coming), she’s no longer in touch with the father (a missionary), and she’s giving up her vows. Anne somehow makes it all about her (??) and cries that she has nothing in her life in comparison.
Andy admits to Anne that he shouldn’t have bailed on Harvard but he’s happy as a boat painter even if it doesn’t pay any money.
Now, here come the hijinks! Dennis is still messing around with the neighbor’s wife when the dude pulls into the drive-way in his convertible. Uh oh. Andy runs into the house to warn Dennis and tells Mary, the nun, to distract the guy. Mary does a great job of awkwardly flirting with the guy and refuses to get out of his car until her brothers are out of the house. Siblings have each other’s backs.
The family has dinner reservations with John at his favorite restaurant. Margret tells her four adult children before they head in, “We’re going in there and we’re going to have a nice evening tonight. Smile, dammit!!” Of course, of course, of course, the family can’t help but be themselves. Dennis is a douchebag, Anne makes snide comments, Andy is sensitive about money, Mary eats all the food off everyone’s plates, and the two little girls want nothing by ice cream.
Anne screams from the bar area. She ran into her ex and he twists her arm behind her back (ugh, asshole). Her brothers run to her rescue and then…. the movie turns slapstick??? A massive fight ensues, both brothers are getting knocked around, John joins in the fray, random strangers hop in and throw punches, even one of Andy’s daughters even bites the bad ex-husband in the butt (??!?!?). Sister Mary gets in on the action and as she’s about to get whacked by the bartender, Anne cries out, “Stop, she’s pregnant!!!” The whole fight pauses like a record scratch, Margret hugs her, and then the punches fly again. It seems a fight coordinator was not in the budget.
After a night in the drunk tank, Margret tells John that her kids clearly need her too much and tearfully calls off the wedding. The four adult kids come in joking around about the night and John is like, “I’m putting my foot down, dammit! I love your mother and she’s calling off the wedding because of you!” All four are like, our bad, we got you dude. To their mother, they say, “Mom, our lives are a mess but it’s not yours to solve, we’re going to work out our issues in therapy and try to heal our intergenerational trauma.” Hahahhaha no of course not, but they do convince Margret to marry John anyway.
The siblings hang around and shoot the shit and try to figure out what they’re going to do with their lives moving forward. At the wedding, they keep making jokes while their mother is at the altar (????!!). The officiant is like, “Could we please have some reverence?” to which John quips, “You’re talking to the wrong family, Padre.” ZING! Then they all pose for the sweetly imperfect portrait seen above. THE END
Highs:
Love Rue! No surprise here that she’s the best part.
Here’s a real-life pandemic love story for you: Our boy Patrick Duffy was married for over 40 years to a woman ten years his senior (!), Carlyn Rosser. They had two sons together but sadly, she passed away from cancer in 2017. Flash forward to 2020, it’s a pandemonium outside and like most of us, PD gets roped into a giant group text thread and everyone’s catching up with each other since we’re all home bored. One of the people on that list was an old casual acting friend from back in the day, Linda Purl aka PAM’S MOM FROM THE OFFICE. Eventually, the thread dwindled away until it was just the two of them and they eventually chatted on FaceTime. Linda now lives in Colorado Springs and Patrick drove 20 hours straight to see her. Direct quote:
"I was standing out in the driveway jumping up and down," Purl said. "I made a total fool of myself. It’s remarkable you didn’t turn around and go back."
Duffy replied: "The other side of that is I drove all those hours and I was five minutes from her house. I pulled over. I was in my 23-hour driving clothes. And in the middle of a Colorado Springs street I’m dropping trou(sers) outside my car. I’m putting on a good pair of slacks. I took a water bottle and (mimics washing hair). I gargle, smell my breath, got back in the car and drove up, like this is how I look."
Few things are more inspiring than when people find in a hopeless place.
Apparently this did well enough to warrant two sequels: Baby of the Bride and Mother of the Bride.
The granddaughter who bit the guy on the butt is named JERSEY (lol what) and she was played by a baby Beverly Mitchell from 7th Heaven (lol whaaat).
And who is behind that smooth saxophone? None other than:
Lows:
Needed more one-liners and hijinks and less drama-drama, especially for a TV movie.
I’m pretty sure Blanche got with a younger man in an episode of the Golden Girls, so none of this feels like a stretch at all. I actually think Patrick and Rue look cute together. And obviously, it almost goes without saying that if the genders were reversed (older man, younger woman), this would be a non-story.
The actress who plays Anne has flirtatious chemistry with the actors who play her brothers. I know they’re not related in real life, but it’s a weird vibe.
Patrick Duffy, despite being second billed, is only in the movie at the very beginning and the very end. Not enough Duffy!
Final Verdict
I was hoping this would be a fun antidote for the Mother’s Day blues but this movie switches genres like four times (??!!??) so it’s not as consistently funny as I’d hope for a movie starring Rue McClanahan. Is it perfect? Nope. You have to take it as it is, just like family.
Thank you for reading about an old ass movie that the pop culture zeitgeist has forgotten! Any typos, weird spacing, or grammar mistakes are the result of my fallible fingers. Links to my social and website can be found below. If you wish, you can buy me a cup of coffee here or here, thank you, I’d really appreciate it. Any questions or comments, feel free to send them along— andrea.laurion@gmail.com
Thank you for sharing this movie with us. I had no idea it existed and now I feel like I must watch it!