Steve Martin Just Returned To His Most Beloved Role
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Steve Martin is an iconic actor and comedian with a long list of classics and appearances to choose from, and in a recent gig, he combined two of them into one of the most meta moments of his career. He made his return to Saturday Night Live for the seventh time and performed a skit with his long-time co-star, Martin Short, to recreate one of their oldest films together, Father of the Bride. According to Deadline, the pair came together with another star from the film, Kieran Culkin, and their current co-star, Selena Gomez.
Father of the Bride saw George Banks (Steve Martin) and his wife, Nina Banks (Diane Keaton), surprised by their daughter’s announcement that she is getting married. Annie Banks (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) hits them with the news that she met the love of her life while studying abroad, and much to George’s chagrin, the two want to get married asap. What follows is a nightmarish spending spree by their wedding coordinator, Franck Eggelhoffer (Martin Short), and his trusty aid Howard Weinstein (BD Wong).
The cast all returned for a sequel, Father of the Bride Part II, four years later, seeing both Annie and Nina becoming pregnant at the same time. In a rare occurrence, all of the cast members from the original returned for the sequel and delivered a similar quality movie without feeling like a retread. The central feeling of the film is that George is both too old to be a father again and too young to be a grandfather.
If you are a fan of the Father of the Bride franchise, you may know that it expanded further during the pandemic as the cast reunited for a Zoom call, Father of the Bride Part 3(ish). The 30-minute special saw the cast, which added the now 25-year-old George Banks-MacKenzie, played by Ben Platt, and Megan Banks, played by Florence Pugh. The storyline featured the former having an impromptu wedding over Zoom to his fiance, who is working at a hospital and quarantined, and who else could be better to plan the impromptu wedding than Franck?
On the Saturday Night Live revisit of the franchise, George Banks is stressed to discover that his daughter, Annie, this time played by Heidi Gardner, is gearing up for her eighth wedding. He admits to her that he cannot afford to pay for the new multi-million dollar union, as his wife, Nina, played this time by Chloe Fineman, is out trying to pay off her previous by driving a Lyft. Of course, there is no chance that Franck isn’t involved in the eighth wedding, and Martin Short wouldn’t miss the opportunity to reprise, and neither could Kieran Culkin.
Steve Martin’s latest skit got even more meta when the musical guest for the wedding appeared, as Selena Gomez charged the stressed-out father $1.8 million to perform. Gomez appears with both Steve Martin and Martin Short in the Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building. One thing this skit reminded all of us of is that Steve Martin and Martin Short are still the kings of comedic timing thirty years later.
