Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Dec 31, 2014TwilightBlue rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Released in 1951 - This somewhat ditzy Chick Flick/Comedy starred the radiant, 19 year-old Elizabeth Taylor whose beauty, alone, wasn't enough to hold its obviously rushed and weak-scripted story together as a whole. Father's Little Dividend, which was a sequel to Father Of The Bride, was, above all else, a Spencer Tracy vehicle. Here Tracy revised his role of Stanley Banks whose daughter, Kay (the eldest of his 3 children) had married Buckley Dunstan, a stuffy, young man whom he didn't (and still doesn't) particularly approve of. In this film, Kay, who has now been happily married to Buckley for a year, excitedly announces, to one and all, that she's pregnant. Instead of joy, this news puts Stanley into a miserable snit because it's now going to make him a grandfather, which is something that he secretly resents. There's lots of unnecessary bickering and confusion going on in this one's story. And there's one really terrible scene (which is supposed to generate the biggest laughs) where (once the baby boy has been born) Stanley takes his infant grandson out in the carriage for a walk and, due to sheer neglect, actually loses him in broad daylight. Father's Little Dividend was a poorly-conceived picture on all counts. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it was filmed in b&w, with a running time of only 82 minutes.